William P. McGivern

25 Classic Fantasy Stories from the Pulps

“Al Addin and the Infra-Red Lamp” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, November 1941.

“Rewbarb’s Remarkable Radio” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, December, 1941.

“Howie Lemp Meets an Enchantress” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, February 1942.

“Double in Death” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.

“Bertie and the Black Arts” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.

“Daughter of the Snake God” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, May 1942.

“The Battle of Manetong” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, June 1942

“Duncan’s Dreadful Doll” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, July 1942.

“When Destiny Dealt” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, September 1942.

“Goddess of the Fifth Plane” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, September 1942.

“Plot of Gold” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

“The Picture of Death” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

“The Tireless Leg” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

“The Ghost That Haunted Hitler” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, December 1942.

“Tink Takes a Hand” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, October 1941.

“Tink Takes a Fling” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, June 1942.

“Tink Takes Command” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, August 1942.

“Tink Fights the Gremlins” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, October 1943.

“Death Makes a Mistake” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, January 1943 issue of Amazing Stories.

“The Willful Puppets” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, February 1943.

“Enchanted Bookshelf” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, March 1943.

“Genie of Bagdad” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, June 1943.

“World Beyond Belief” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, August 1943.

“People of the Pyramids” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, December 1941.

“Adopted Son of the Stars” originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, March 1941.

A note from the publisher

William Peter McGivern (1918–1982) was an American novelist and television scriptwriter. He published more than 20 novels, mostly mysteries and crime thrillers, some under the pseudonym Bill Peters. His novels were adapted for a number of films, among them Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), a noir tale of three losers, The Big Heat (1953), starring Glenn Ford as a cop that will do anything to get his man, and Rogue Cop (1954), a film noir directed by Roy Rowland. The Big Heat received an Edgar Award in 1954 as Best Motion Picture, which McGivern shared as author of the original novel.

He also wrote prolifically for pulp magazines, not just mysteries but fantasy and science fiction. This volume collects 23 of his fantasy stories.

While a successful novelist, McGivern moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to write for television and film. His credits include the TV series Ben Casey, Adam-12, and Kojak, as well as the William Castle film, I Saw What You Did (1965). McGivern died in Palm Desert, California in 1982, aged 63.

Enjoy!

— John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

Al Addin and the Infra-Red Lamp

First published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1941.

Chapter I

“Hi, everybody!”

With easy nonchalance, Albert Addin strolled casually through lounge of the Tennis and Topper Club, ignoring the fact that nobody bothered to answer his greeting. Finally, he paused before the grill of the mail desk. There, a frosty-eyed clerk gave him his morning mail and a look that clearly said:

“Why don’t you pay up your dues?” Undisturbed by this official coldness, Albert pocketed his mail and made his way back to the lounge where he sank into an overstuffed leather armchair. Comfortably entrenched against any sudden shock, young Mr. Addin turned his attention to opening his daily communications.

A nasty dun letter from his tailor made Albert wince a bit regretfully as he dropped it, half-read, into a wastebasket beside him. Another, and equally nasty, note from the gentlemen who had been silly enough to finance his sleek yellow roadster, comprised the contents of the second epistle he opened.

Albert shuddered slightly as he dropped the second letter into the deep-bellied ash tray beside his chair. The third letter caused him to frown. It was a brief and coldly legal notice from the bank, stating quite heartlessly that there would be no more annuity checks for another three months — due to the fact that he had overdrawn that far in advance.

His fourth communication was a telegram. Thoughtfully, Albert turned it over in his hands a bit before opening it, scarcely daring to hope that a rich uncle might have died somewhere. Then, deciding morosely that he didn’t have any relatives who’d be decent enough to help him out by dying, he sighed and opened the telegram.

MOMENT IS RIPE. FATHER IN FINE MOOD. AUNT ANNABELLE ALMOST PLEASANT. YOU ARE TO COME UP TO MASTIFF MANOR FOR THE WEEKEND. BE PREPARED TO MAKE YOUR BEST IMPRESSION ON THEM, DEAREST, AND ALL WILL GO WELL. LOADS OF LOVE.

MARGOT.

Albert Addin read these lines and took a deep breath. Then he re-read them. No, there was no mistake. Incredible though it seemed, the telegram said what it said. The furrows of worry smoothed from his brow and a bland, almost beamish smile wreathed his features. A far-away, vacant glint of tenderness came into his gray eyes. This was from Margot. This was from the girl he loved, the girl he desired to marry, the girl whose father was worth, roughly, a million of the crinkly green stuff.

“Somehow, Margot has brought him around,” Albert told himself happily. “Somehow, she’s worked the old bear into a state where he’d actually be willing to consider his daughter marrying me!”

And then, reflectively, “And even Aunt Annabelle isn’t in an axe-swinging mood!”

Albert Addin felt like singing, but because of the rules of quiet established for the benefit of the patriarch members of the Tennis and Topper Club, he confined his joy to humming a strain from that classic “Beat Me Bertha With a Scrub Stick Sizzle Bar.”

For this looked like the omen of victory in his long battle for the hand of Margot Mastiff: A long and bloody battle which had been made almost impossible because of Margot’s father, Major Mastiff, and her acid-hearted Aunt Annabelle — both of whom heartily detested the very sight of Albert.

Once, almost a year ago, Albert reflected, he hadn’t been in disfavor with Margot’s relatives. That was when his courtship of the fair Margot had been in its primary stage. That was when he had been cordially invited to spend a weekend at Mastiff Manor.

Albert felt a deep twinge of remorse as he remembered that weekend, now. He had brought his candid camera along with him — the love he held for cameras amounted to a craze with Albert — and had made himself the hit of the weekend taking pictures of all the assembled guests. Major Mastiff had beamed into his lens, Aunt Annabelle had even consented to pose, and Albert had had a merry time dashing about and clicking his shutter.

Everything had been rosy, and his courtship had never looked more favorable. Albert left Mastiff Manor that Sunday with high hopes of an early marriage. But then his plans hit a sudden snag.

Albert developed the pictures he’d taken. The developed prints showed all too clearly that Albert Addin was a rotten photographer. The shots of the guests were fuzzy, odd-shaped, monstrous, and accidentally screamingly funny. Albert determined to burn them, to make up some plausable excuse for not shooting the prints along to the guests.

But before Albert was able to burn them, they were seen, and howled at, by a friend of his who had dropped in for a drink. The friend was the editor of that nasty little picture magazine, Gaze. It seemed that the editor of Gaze wanted to publish the pictures in his humor section. It seemed that Albert was — as usual — broke. It also seemed that the offer made by Albert’s pal editor for the pictures was tempting — too tempting for the pecunious Albert to resist.

The snapshots appeared in Gaze.

The nation laughed uproariously. Major Mastiff had a stroke. Margot was almost prompted to give Albert the gate. Aunt Annabelle tried to bring suit against the “sniveling young upstart.” Albert was banned from Mastiff Manor, and from that day forward was forced to conduct his courtship of Margot on the sly.

Until now.

“A master diplomat, Margot,” Albert sighed happily. “A veritable genius at pouring oil on troubled waters!” And then he shook his head in admiration at the tremendous bit of soothing-over which his fiancée had accomplished since his banishment.

Albert felt warm inside, and very happy indeed. He could even gaze down at the crumpled dun letters in the wastebasket beside him and beam cheerfully. For bills were no longer of any consequence, now that his courtship troubles were straightened out. For after all, the girl he was soon to marry had a filthy-rich father, didn’t she?

So Albert rose happily, making his way across the lounge to the elevators, conscious that he had never loved Margot Mastiff more than at this moment. As the elevator took him up to his rooms, he broke forth into a light rendition of the second verse of “Mamma Your High-Falutin’ Baby’s Gone to Texas on a Jive Bar for a Break Bath.”

His bags were on the bed and almost packed, half an hour later, for Albert wasn’t going to waste any time in catching the swiftest train for Mastiff Manor. Glancing swiftly at his watch, Albert closed his bags and reached for his hat and coat. Then, for an instant, he hesitated, his glance going to his bathroom door a few steps away.

“Damn, I almost forgot,” Albert said snapping his fingers. Then he stepped swiftly over to the bathroom door and opened it very, very carefully so that too much light wouldn’t stream into its darkened interior. The management of the Tennis and Topper Club, not to mention that worthy organization’s board of directors, would have been extremely shocked — not to mention angered — to know that young Albert Addin had turned the luxurious sunken bathroom of his suite into a photographic darkroom!

And now, with the door closed safely behind him, Albert turned on the faint light in his combination bathroom-darkroom, and gazed lovingly down into the washbowl at the photographic prints he’d left soaking. The photography bug in Albert had been too strong to allow him to pop off for a weekend while developing fluid ate away the artistry he’d caught in his latest camera efforts.

There were some special shots he’d taken — still life — of tables and oranges and bowls in his rooms, and now Albert was eagerly curious to see how they’d turned out. He’d been using a new technique picked up in a photography guide — infra red film filtering on still life shots.

Tenderly, Albert removed the prints from the fluid. Lovingly, he peered at them. Delightedly, he whistled. They weren’t bad at all, which, for Albert, was a major triumph in camera lore.

“This shot of the apple on the table beside the couch is rather fine,” he told himself exultantly. “Salon stuff, that’s what it is!”

“Yes, indeed,” Albert continued aloud, gazing at the print, “it’s a duezzy, it’s—”

Suddenly a frown broke out on Albert’s face.

Something was screwy, definitely.

For, beside the apple on the table there was something else!

“Why,” Albert gasped in astonishment, “that’s an ancient oriental lamp, there!” He pursed his lips in bewilderment, for he was certain that when he’d photographed the apple there hadn’t been any lamp on the table. The table had been bare but for the apple. He’d been shooting “simple, artistic” stuff, not cluttered tables!

As Albert looked again, the lamp was still there in the print. Rubbing his finger across it didn’t make it go away. He frowned, and still carrying the print, stepped swiftly out of his bathroom laboratory. Albert stepped across his bedroom and into his drawing room. There, in the corner, was the table. Beside it was the couch.

The table was the one he’d used in the shot. As a matter of fact, the apple was still on the table — with a piece bitten out of it — just as he’d left it the night before. Just as he’d left it after finishing his photographic efforts.

But there was no lamp there, and the realization of this seemed to reassure Albert. After all, if he’d photographed a lamp he would have been aware of it wouldn’t he?

“Of course I would,” Albert declared. “I most certainly would have been aware of a lamp, if one had been there!”

But when he looked quickly at the print in his hand, Albert was again shaken. There was a lamp, directly beside the apple on the table! But another glance at the actual table showed that there couldn’t be.

“We’ll see about this,” Albert muttered resolutely stepping over to the table.

Albert put his hand down on the table, moving it slowly along the smooth wood surface. Then, suddenly, his hand stopped, sweat broke out on his forehead, and he gulped. Something was there beside the apple!

Something that he could feel, but couldn’t see!

Carefully Albert allowed his hand to caress the object. It was rather small, pitcher shaped, metallic. Albert gulped again, and sweat broke out anew.

“And I haven’t had a drop,” Albert muttered. “Not a drop in three days!”

Gingerly, Albert lifted the invisible something-or-other, his hand trembling badly. Frantically, he strained his eyes, as if the very effort of their peering would bring this invisible thing-ama-jig into view.

And then, quite suddenly, as his hand trembled more than before, the invisible what zit slipped from his clammy fingers, thudding onto the floor.

Instinctively, Albert’s eyes followed the invisible drop. And at the instant his ears heard the “thunk” of the object hitting the floor, Albert’s eyes widened in startled incredulity. The thing was now visible![1]

It was as if the jar had shaken off its cloak of invisibility. And Albert, pop-eyed in astonishment, gazed down at the same oriental lamp that was seen on the print he held in his trembling hand!

“Presto,” Albert gasped. “First I didn’t see it, now I do!”

Handling the lamp carefully, Albert turned it over in a sort of stupefied curiosity. His mind was frantically trying to change gears, to adjust itself to the realization that here was an object which a moment before hadn’t been visible for the naked eye to view. An object which he had unwittingly photographed, even though he hadn’t been able to see it at the time.

Albert shook his head. An oriental lamp whose properties of remaining unseen had been destroyed by its fall to the floor. But the camera had seen it, even though he himself hadn’t. Suddenly the furrows in Albert’s brows lessened somewhat, and he almost grinned triumphantly at what he considered to be a swiftly arrived at solution.

“The infra-red film filter I had on the camera,” he said aloud. “That’s what did it!” Hazily, he had a mental vision of infra-red cutting through invisible cloaks like a classroom diagram. It was simple. The special filter, about which Albert knew absolutely nothing, had revealed an invisible object, about which he knew absolutely nothing. The two things had much in common, in that he knew nothing about either of them. Q.E.D. The infra-red film had penetrated the invisibility of the oriental lamp, and when the lamp fell to the floor, the shock had destroyed its invisibility.

The shock was gone, now, and Albert was left with only a vast pride at the clever way in which he had arrived at the nub of mystery.

“Pip, pip,” he told himself. “Took a bit of clever thinking, eh wot?”

And suddenly, as he looked again at the lamp in his hand, Albert was struck by another staggeringly clever thought.

“This lamp,” he declared brightly to the silence, “will make a tremendous hit with Margot’s Aunt Annabelle. If I remember correctly, she collects old junk along this line.”

So saying, Albert returned to the bedroom, stuffed the lamp into one of his bags, and turned to get his hat and coat. If there was any question in the back of his brain as to the origin of the lamp, or as to why it had been invisible, he wasn’t concerned with such small matters at the moment. The thing had been invisible, now it wasn’t. Aunt Annabelle would be delighted with it, and — besides, he’d have to hurry to catch his train.

Chapter II

Albert Has a Visitor

Margot Mastiff, looking blond, demure, and lovely in the white tennis costume she was wearing, met Albert at the railroad station of the little village several miles from Mastiff Manor.

They were jouncing along in the station wagon which Margot piloted with much daring and little skill, some twenty minutes later. Having made his greetings, congratulated his loved one on her finesse in smoothing the troubled waters, and commented on the weather, Albert was now sitting back smoking a cigarette and watching the outlines of Mastiff Manor rise in the distance.

“Got a present for your Aunt Annabelle,” Albert said in a sudden surge of recollection, as Margot narrowly missed running down a chicken which had tried to cross the dusty country road. “A little antique, a mere bauble, which I’m certain she’ll go for.”

“Oh, Albert, that’s marvelous!” Margot turned to give him a glance of breathless admiration, almost running the car off the road. “She’ll be so pleased.”

“Don’t doubt it, old girl. But can’t you watch where we’re going a little more closely?” Albert was about to launch into a recounting of the mysterious circumstances under which he gained possession of the oriental oddity, but gave up the idea on the realization that the tale might end up with Margot’s driving them into a ditch. Time enough for that later. Besides, the tale would make fine conversational fodder at the dinner table.

Then they were turning up the long drive leading into the estate of Mastiff Manor. The Manor was exactly as Albert remembered it. Huge, rambling, stone, a wing here and a wing there. The place was bedded in a vast sward of green lawn, and the lawn was spotted with tall, shade-giving oak trees. The largest of these trees, a gigantic one just off the porch and closest to the Manor, Albert remembered as being Major Mastiff’s favorite shade spot.

“Ahhh,” Albert breathed deep of the keen country air. “The old Mastiff Oak, eh? Brings back recollections.”

Yes,” Margot nodded pleasantly, narrowly missing a hedge on the side of the gravel drive. “Father will probably be out there sitting under it, waiting for us. He’s had a stone bench built beneath it since the last time you were here.”

Major Mastiff was, indeed, sitting on the stone bench beneath the Mastiff Oak, holding a tall, cool glass in his hand and waiting for them after they’d parked the station wagon.

Like the Mastiff Oak, Major Mastiff hadn’t changed perceptibly since the last time Albert had seen him. Like the oak, he might have been a little bit more gnarled around the trunk, but otherwise he seemed the same. His blue eyes, hiding behind triplet pouches, were just as cold, just as blue, just as frostily appraising as they had been before. His white hair and well-trimmed white moustache still gave him an air of dignified, iron-fisted authority. Even the fact that he possessed a vast middle and waddled slightly as he rose to meet them, didn’t detract from patrician austerity of Major Mastiff’s appearance.

Albert extended his hand and smiled cheerfully, unable to still the pounding of his heart. He could never face the major without feeling that he was being examined by a Star Chamber tyrant.

“Hah,” Major Mastiff said unyieldingly, ignoring young Addin’s hand. “Hah, I see you’re here, Addin!”

Albert gulped.

“Yes, arrived pronto, eh wot? Deuced nice of you to ask me up, Major. Especially after—”

Albert was about to say, “after what happened,” but a nasty kick on the side of his shin from Margot warned him that there was no sense in probing old wounds. So he reddened uncomfortably and finished lamely, “Deuced nice and all that!”

Major Mastiff, after nodding and muttering something about persons with limited vocabularies, returned to his stone bench under the shade tree with the attitude of a man who has completed an unpleasant duty. Margot’s tug on Albert’s arm told him that the first encounter was at an end.

“Father’s still a little touchy about you, Albert,” Margot explained as they entered Mastiff Manor. “But you’ll win him over completely before you leave. I’m sure you will.”

Albert gulped.

“I can try, pet. I can only try.”

They had paused in the center of the hallway of the Manor, and were immediately conscious of a shrill voice coming from atop a staircase to their left.

“Margot, Margot?”

Albert’s recollection of Aunt Annabelle’s buzz-saw tones gave him a sudden additional uncomfortable twinge, and unconsciously he braced himself.

“Yes Aunt Annabelle?” Margot trilled in reply.

“Have you been to the station to pick up that, that, that, pusillanimous pup yet?” Aunt Annabelle’s voice came down.

“Aunt Annabelle!” Margot said sharply, face reddening. “Albert is here. He’s with me now.”

“Oh,” Aunt Annabelle’s voice floated back. There was no confusion or apology in her tone. Just the grim satisfaction of one who has made her position clear.

“He’s brought you something that you’ll like especially well, Aunt Annabelle,” Margot said quickly.

“Bring it up!”

“His bags aren’t unpacked yet, Aunt Annabelle. He’ll give it to you at luncheon,” Margot said, after Albert whispered to her, pointing to his still unpacked luggage.

Albert gulped deeply, running his finger beneath his now moist collar band. All told, his reception wasn’t quite what he had expected it to be. However, old Major Mastiff hadn’t turned an elephant gun on him as yet, and Aunt Annabelle didn’t quite pour boiling oil down the staircase to greet his arrival. There was still life, so obviously there was room for hope.

Albert turned a wan face toward Margot.

“Heh,” he observed, “they both seem to be a little frigid.”

Margot beamed.

“Don’t worry about Aunt Annabelle, darling. Once she has her hands on your present, she’ll thaw out completely.” Then, reverting to her role of hostess, Margot said: “It’s eleven o’clock, now, and we’ll be lunching pretty shortly. You’d better get up to your room so you’ll have time to wash and unpack.”

“Righto, pet. We’ll take to the battle as soon as I’m shipshape,” Albert answered, planting an affectionate and somewhat damp kiss on her cheek. But as he trudged up the staircase toward the room Margot had told him he was to occupy, Albert Addin felt anything but jaunty. There was a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach. A sensation caused not so much by the hostile attitude of Margot’s kin, as by a peculiar premonition that hung over him like a gloomy pall. He couldn’t explain this premonition to himself. The best he could do was endure it.

Albert Addin had unpacked, changed his travelworn attire, and shaved by the time he got around to bringing forth Aunt Annabelle’s gift from the grip in which he’d carried it. Now, gazing at it admiringly as he sat on the edge of the bed, Albert saw that it would make an even more delightful present to the old girl than he had first imagined.

Mentally, he patted himself on the back for having gotten the inspiration to bring it here. As a curio, Albert sensed, it was definitely something to look at. The scroll worked around the base of the lamp obviously bore ancient Arabian script.

Albert had seen pictures of these old lamps, but never the real McCoy. Consequently, he spent considerable time just sitting there, turning it over in his hands, and examining it. Vaguely, in the back of his brain, he was beginning to arrive at an explanation for its presence on the table in his suite at the Topper and Tennis Club. He recalled that a visiting East Indian rug salesman of no little wealth had occupied his suite before he moved in. Undoubtedly, the rug salesman had left it behind, although Albert could think of no reason for his doing so.

“Possibly,” Albert mused, “he forgot to pack it when he left because it was invisible.”

That seemed like a logical enough reason to Albert’s extremely adaptable mind, so he let it go at that, continuing his study of the lamp. It was then that he noticed a slight scratch and a tiny smudge on the metallic surface of the curiosity. These flaws were obviously the result of Albert’s having dropped it while it was still invisible.

Considering that it wouldn’t be right not to give it to Aunt Annabelle looking — so to speak — at its best, Albert’s hand automatically reached into his pocket and pulled forth a handkerchief. Wetting the handkerchief slightly with the tip of his tongue, Albert applied a little elbow grease, a bit of deft polishing, to the tainted spots on the surface.

And precisely five seconds later, the room seemed to explode in one vast blinding splash of lightning!

Albert’s next awareness came as he looked dazedly around the bedroom from the position on the floor to which he had been hurled. His ears were ringing wildly, and the lamp was no longer in his grasp. Someone was helping him to his feet.

“Didn’t hurtcha none, did I? a voice was saying. “I ain’t in practice on my entrances, but I’ll get back in form on ’em pretty quick.”

Albert looked up dazedly into the face of the speaker, into the face of the creature who was helping him to his feet. He saw, foggily, a huge, towering, hulking monstrosity of a man — a creature clad in what appeared to be the remnants of filthy, silken, yellow bedcovers. And as Albert gulped, too stunned to be amazed, he shook his head desperately to clear it of the faint pinwheels which were yet cluttering up his vision.

His eyes could focus, now the creature stepped back, giving Albert his first full view of him. And now Albert let out his first yelp of surprise.

The creature had an earnest, if somewhat vacant, face, his nose mashed like that of a pug who hadn’t ducked soon or often enough. Albert suspected that the fellow’s ears, which were hidden now beneath an incredible ragged and dirty turban, were probably cauliflowers. His arms were long, almost apelike, and his fingers dangled from his great hands like big bunches of bananas.

“Huuuullo,” the monstrosity said, his voice having all the musical qualities of falling hardware.

Albert Addin took a deep breath. “Who,” he managed to say at last, “are you?”

The creature scratched his head. “George,” he answered a bit sheepishly. “My name is George, and I yam a genie.” He smiled, then, in a friendly, though somewhat punchdrunk manner.

“George, a genie!” Albert was incredulously indignant. “Don’t get wise, my man. Don’t pull that stuff around here. Think you can come into people’s rooms, bopping them on the back of the head and stealing valuable antiques, and get away with it all by the casual explanation that you’re a genie? Oh no you don’t. Albert Addin isn’t a sucker. Never has been. Come clean, now, who in the devil are you, and what do you mean by coming bed-sheeted into my room this way?”

The big fellow squirmed uncomfortably, and the trickle of a large tear started in the corner of one eye. “I yam what I yam. I can’t help it none if I’m a genie, can I? And besides, yuh called me, didn’cha?”

The big fellow’s attitude made it instantly apparent to Albert’s shaken senses that, come what may, he could be talked out of any mayhem if handled with enough firmness.

“Don’t slobber,” Albert said, summoning all the brisk authority he could command. “I can’t stand slobbering criminals!”

“But I yain’t a criminal,” George’s husky voice was pleading. He shuffled his big feet frightenedly. “I yam just a genie, trying to do what I yam tolt tuh do. Yuh called me, an’here I yam!”

Albert Addin suddenly spied the oriental lamp lying over in a corner of the bedroom where, evidently, the explosion had knocked it. Suddenly a horrible premonition assailed him and sweat broke out on his brow.

Genie.

Genie. Lamp. The genie of the lamp. There was a lamp, and this hulk claimed to be a genie!

Albert had read the Arabian Nights.

But, no. Such things were impossible. This was an age of civili — Suddenly Albert recalled the fact that this lamp had been invisible when he’d first found it. He hadn’t considered that impossible. But, of course, he hadn’t considered invisibility impossible because the damned thing had been invisible, and that was that. Albert realized that his bewildered brain was chasing itself around in circles. He tried to get a grip on himself.

“Look now,” he said determinedly. “You say you’re a genie. Okay, then, prove it!”

Albert felt a surge of inner triumph as he saw the effect this demand had upon the creature who called himself George. The hulking fellow’s features creased in a look of infinitely insulted reproach. His brows knotted. He appeared stumped by the question. He looked like a police dog who had just been asked to show his badge.

“Huh?” George managed.

“I said prove it,” Albert repeated triumphantly. “Prove that you’re a genie!”

“I yam, that’s all,” George declared with desperate intensity. “I yam a genie!”

“Prove it,” Albert repeated his demand.

“What’ll I do?” George muttered doggedly. “I yam a genie. Gimme somethin’ what I should do fer yuh.”

Albert’s smile of triumph was almost satanical.

“Go jump in the lake,” he sneered.

There was a sudden “pop”, like the white splash of a flash bulb, and the gargantuan George was gone into thin air! Another “pop”, before Albert could catch his startled breath, and George stood once more before him in the bedroom — sopping wet, drenched to the skin!

Albert blinked.

“Wha—” he began.

“I jumped,” George explained. “Brrrrrr,” he shook his soaked robes like a huge dog, “the lake’s cold, and wet!”

Albert looked dazedly at the puddles around George’s great feet. He blinked, looking up at George, struggling futilely for words.

“I kin do anything,” George announced with shy pride, “anything at all.”

Albert Addin was the sort of person who could harbor strong suspicions, nourish dogged doubts. But when you put the evidence before him he believed, instantly and without quibbling.

This was the case now. Albert was thunderstruck, but Albert believed. Implicitly. He had asked to be shown. He had been. Q.E.D.

“So you are a genie,” Albert said at last. “Well I never—”

Albert left the sentence unfinished, while the cogs in his mental adaptation machine whirled frantically into gear to meet this new state of affairs. Albert would have an unearthly fear over the possibility that things like ghosts, or genies, existed. Like many people, it was the unknown that terrified him. But confronted with something that he knew to be true, Albert Addin was made of sterner stuff. He faced facts, met issues. Now he was doing both.

“So you’re a genie,” Albert said with some degree of calm. “Well, that’s nice and all that, old boy. But really, I’m afraid you’ll have to toddle along, go back to where you came from. There’s no use for you here, old man. Can’t use you, sorry.” He made his voice crisp, authoritative, and even waved his hand vaguely to round out his comments.

“But yuh called!” George, the genie, had a desperate, pleading note in his voice. There was a look in his bovine eyes that tore at the very fiber of Albert’s heartstrings. “Yuh rubbed the lamp,” the genie was going on, “didn’ cha?” He gulped. “Yuh can’t call a guy fer a job, and then tell him there ain’t none. Not after he ain’t had no work in over a thousand years, yuh can’t!” In spite of himself, Albert felt like a man who has just slapped an orphan across its round little face.

“Over a thousand years?” he said incredulously. “Does Madame Perkins know about this?”

George, the genie, had tears in his eyes. His voice was a pleading croak. He’d removed his turban and was worrying it with his great paws, occasionally using it to dab at the corners of his moist eyes.

“Over a thousand years,” he repeated. “Times has been tough, all over. Yuh ain’t gonna send me back now, are yuh? Yuh wouldn’t thrun me outta the foist job I get in over a thousand years, would yuh?”

Somewhere within the narrow confines of Albert Addin’s breast, there was a warm and kindly heart. And now it was touched by a swift, wrenching surge of pity. He tried to make his expression a little bit more kindly, tried to think of something which he could say to soften the blow of the hulking monster.

But George, the genie, was continuing desperately, apparently aware that his new-found employer wanted none of him.

“Please, I kin do anything. Anything at all. Jest try me. Yuh seen how quick like I jumped into the lake, didn’cha? There ain’t nothing hardly I can’t do!”

Albert, feeling like a stern but kindly padre in a Spanish Mission movie, shook his head slowly.

“No. Sorry, old boy. Might think of you in the future. If you’ll just fill out a blank and leave your name with the girl at the desk, I’ll call you when anything comes up.”

“Girl? Desk?” George was puzzled. “A, figure of speech,” Albert informed him.

“I kin getcha any number of girls yuh might want,” George said in sudden inspiration.

“No thanks,” Albert was firm. “I have one.”

“How about palaces?” George suggested hopefully. “Yuh want I should make yuh a palace? I kin make foist rate palaces!”

Albert shook his head again. “There’s nothing you can do for me, old man — as much as I’d like to help you out.”

“Jools?” George inquired earnestly. “I kin getcha all sortsa jools. Roooopies, dimunds, hatfullsa jools. Assorted sulectshums, if yuh like ’em better dat way!”

Albert wavered. Not at the declaration of power on George’s part, but because of the infinite look of dog-like pleading in his bovine eyes.

“Frankly,” George babbled on, “I need the woik. I got refrunces, too!”

Albert shook his head, then, with a start, looked at his watch. If was almost noon. He’d be late for luncheon if this lumbering lunkhead didn’t remove himself pretty quickly. And suddenly, for the first time, Albert realized what a problem George would present if he were discovered by any of the Mastiffs or their servants!

“Look,” Albert said, less kind, now and more anxious. “Why don’t you call again some time. I’m in a hurry. I’ve an appointment.” Albert’s brow was suddenly moist with the perspiration of worry.

“Yuh can’t walk out without yuh should look at my refrunces,” George pleaded desperately. He was digging deeply into his filthy bedsheeted, yellow robes, and now his paw came forth clutching some yellowed parchments. He handed these over to Albert. “See, refrunces, past guys what employed me, and for what I worked good.”

Automatically, and against his better judgment, Albert found himself accepting the yellowed parchments. They were obviously ancient, and in a dirty state of near decay. But the fine script on them was still legible. His eyes popped open wide as he peered at the script.

“Why,” said Albert amazedly, “I can read this script. It’s written in English!”

“Yeah,” George nodded matter-of-factly. “It was writ by a magician who I last woiked for. He writ it in lang-witch which is plain no matter what langwitch yuh speaks. Like my talk. Anybody understands it.”

“I haven’t time,” said Albert as the shock left him somewhat. “You tell me what these references say and then please vanish, or something. I’m going to be late for luncheon, and I can’t have you around!” Albert himself was growing a little desperate now.

George looked suddenly sheepish.

“I can’t read so good,” he admitted, reddening. “I never learnt. Always too busy.”

“You mean,” Albert was more amazed by this than by anything that had occurred so far, “you mean you’re a genie and you can’t read?”

George nodded.

“Me mudder made me get out an’ woik when I was young. I never got no educashun.”

Albert glanced swiftly at the ancient script, the ancient script that read as modernly as a letter from one of his creditors.

To who it may concern: This gargantuan son of a stupid camel is a menace to any right-minded employer. Earnest, yes. Willing, of course. But blundering — May Allah forgive the words I have in my mind for him! He is all thumbs. Everything he does is reckoned in ghastly blundering which leads to stupendous calamity. Do not hire this half-witted oaf. If he does not eat you out of house and home, he will see to it that your brow becomes the resting place for the demons of madness. I have made the lamp by which he can be summoned invisible — in the hope that it will never be found again, and that he will languish through time in the ranks of the unemployed. If, by any chance, you have penetrated the cloak of invisibility around the lamp, and have summoned this lunk-headed lout, I can only wish you the patience and fortune of the Prophet.

Signed: Achmed Smith

President, Eastern Arabian

Magician’s Union, Local 402

There was a new look in Albert’s eye as he turned from the letter to George, who stood watching him with a proudly sluggy smile, a look of a growing apprehension, the approaching desperation of fear.

“You say you can’t read,” Albert muttered. “And this note makes it obvious.” He handed the parchment back to George, who replaced it tenderly beneath his filthy robes.

“There’d be only one thing I need badly,” Albert mused. “That would be money, since I’m somewhat short now. However, that isn’t up your alley.

The best favor you could do me,” he went on, voice louder, “is to beat it, vanish, scram, like a nice fellow.”

Albert’s voice was pleading in its last notes, coaxing. “I’ve got enough to straighten out, without you around. Now won’t you go away, like a good fellow, for good?”

George suddenly stopped looking worried, snapped his fingers as if recalling something.

“I’ll betcha yuh don’t know it,” he said exultantly.

“Know what?” Albert frowned.

“The command what makes me go away fer good, instead of on errands fer yuh,” George said, now completely happy. “I’ll betcha don’t know it!”

“What is it?” Albert felt horribly like a man upon whom a trap has fallen. “What’s the command?”

George grew coy.

“I don’t know, honest.” He gulped. “But I’m glad I don’t know, ’cause now I kin woik fer yuh, huh?”

“Oh Lord,” Albert groaned, knees suddenly weak.

There was a “pop” like the white flash of a photo bulb exploding. George was suddenly gone. Another “pop” and George was back. Albert blinked bewilderedly, frightenedly.

“Here, whatcha wanted. What I overheard yuh mention,” George said ingratiatingly. And Albert was astonished to see a handful of green currency in the genie’s paw!

Albert gulped. Money was money. Suddenly he felt that perhaps this wasn’t going to be quite so bad, that perhaps George would not be able to cause too much damage by staying around a bit. He took the bills.

“Well,” Albert muttered indecisively, “this makes things a bit different. Thanks, old man, I was a bit short. Maybe you don’t have to leave right away.” Then, looking at his watch, he suddenly wheeled. “Almost late for luncheon,” he gasped. “Have to hurry. Try to be of some use around here while I’m gone. Get some wood for the fireplace. Be sort of a handy man, will you? We’ll talk things over when I come back. But mind you, don’t go running loose around here!”

Then, turning, Albert hastily stepped out of the room. Once again his mental adjustment gears were stripping themselves to mesh in with this new light in which he now viewed George, the genie. And, as usual, the adaptation was working with brisk smoothness.

It was just as well for Albert’s new state of mind in regard to George, that he didn’t see the hulking genie turn and gaze thoughtfully around the room after the door closed. For George’s gaze was fixed most strongly on the barren fireplace and the empty wood box beside it.

Chapter III

George Goes to Work

It was with mingled feelings that Albert Addin entered the oak-ceilinged dining room of Mastiff Manor. He was still pondering the amazing antics of George, the genie, who had popped into his existence so unceremoniously. His common sense bade him to accept such blessings without quibbling as to their source, but something else, possibly a sixth sense, seemed to be trying to warn him of impending disaster. If that scroll were right — With a shrug of his well-tailored shoulders, he dismissed the matter altogether. Which was thoroughly typical. When anything bothered him to the extent that it made him think there was only one result, it was consigned to oblivion.

He slid into a chair to the right of Major Mastiff, conscious that he was late for luncheon by several minutes. The major was breathing heavily, which Albert knew, was a very bad sign.

“Terribly sorry,” Albert apologized charmingly, “but I lost all track of time while I was looking out the window at your beautiful estate. It’s absolutely remarkable, Major, the way you keep it up. Absolutely remarkable.”

The major sniffed, somewhat mollified, and Albert smiled happily at Margot. She smiled back, warmly and admiringly.

Aunt Annabelle cleared her throat decisively. Her long face was set sternly and her uncompromising eyes regarded him suspiciously.

“You spoke of a present,” she said in an unpleasantly business-like voice, “did you forget that too in your contemptation of nature’s wonders?” Albert swallowed suddenly. Hang it, he was in the soup now. He had utterly failed to realize that he simply couldn’t give Aunt Annabelle the lamp now. Something deeper than instinct told him that Aunt Annabelle and George would not get along.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed weakly, “joking, always joking, aren’t you, Auntie, old bean?”

Aunt Annabelle set her lips in distaste. “Don’t call me that,” she said frigidly, “and I wasn’t joking. I never joke.”

“That’s right,” Albert stalled desperately for time, “you don’t. Just the other day we were talking about jokes down at the club and I said that in my opinion you—”

“About the present,” Aunt Annabelle interrupted quietly but firmly, “you were saying?”

“Well you see,” Albert struggled on manfully, “I–I knew how you liked surprises so I–I decided to wait until this evening and, and really surprise you.”

“I detest surprises,” Aunt Annabelle said grimly.

“You’ll love this one, though,” Albert almost choked with the desperate heartiness he put into his voice.

Aunt Annabelle attacked her cutlet savagely and did not bother to reply. It was obvious, Albert thought gloomily, that the old girl still cherished her violent prejudice toward him.

Except for this, the first part of the meal rambled along smoothly enough. Albert was beginning to breathe easily by the time the lemon pudding was served, but before he could sink a spoon into the dessert, there was a loud cry from the hall, and the next instant a red-faced, overalled figure burst into the dining room.

Albert recognized him as Jeakes, the gardener, a quaint, highly-tempered old gentleman.

Jeakes puffed furiously for an instant, and then strode to Major Mastiff’s chair. His small blue eyes were protruding like marbles and his face was stained a dull vermillion from the top of his collar to the roots of his white hair.

“I queet,” he shouted suddenly, “I queet. I am through. Finished for good. Geeve me my money and I leave. I work here no more. “Ze new gardener he ees—”

“Now, now Jeakes,” Major Mastiff interrupted testily, “what’s the meaning of this? What’s all this nonsense about a new gardner?”

“Ze new gardener,” Jeakes cried in a shrill voice, “he is here already. I hope you are satisfied. Ze beeg baboon has destroyed ze Mastiff Oak. You hear? He has cut down the Mastiff Oak. I queet. I am through. Zat tree she ees like a baby to me and now she is gone.”

Major Mastiff’s face had drained of all color as Jeakes spoke. His large puffy body began to quiver.

“Jeakes,” he cried hoarsely, “y — you’ve been drinking. You must be. The Mastiff Oak it — it—” Major Mastiff’s voice trailed away to an inaudible whisper. His breath came faster as he rose unsteadily from his chair. He turned, almost automatically, and moved heavily toward the door.

“I’ll see,” he muttered, “I’ll see.” Albert winced. He knew the danger signals. He could tell from the angry red that circled the major’s neck that the great-grand-daddy of all Mastiff temper storms was brewing.

But Albert knew that his skirts were clear. He knew that he would not be the victim of the latest Mastiff upheaval, so he relaxed comfortably, almost happy in the realization that some other poor chump was in for it this time. There were few things dearer to the major’s rock-like heart than his beautiful shade tree, Mastiff Oak. If someone had been idiotic enough to have it chopped down, that someone would regard being boiled in oil as a light penance after the major got through with him.

Albert’s pleasant musings were disrupted by the sounds of a commotion outside the dining room door. He heard the major’s voice raised in stormy wrath, and the next instant he strode back into the room, dragging behind him a sulky lumbering figure, dressed in yellow silk and carrying a large business-like axe in his hands.

Albert’s eyes popped open, and his stomach turned a slow nauseating flip-flop. For the figure with the major was George, the genie!

The major churned across the rug like a battleship and stopped in front of Albert. A finger the size of a banana shot out and wagged in front of the Addin nose.

“As usual,” the major said in a hoarse, strangled voice, “I find myself coming to you for explanations when something ghastly and unnatural occurs. This man,” the major paused to glare at George, “says he is your gen — jin — I guess he means your vale t.” The major’s cheeks were the color of ripe beets now and his voice had sunk to a hissing whisper. “Answer me Addin, is this — this creature your valet?”

Albert swallowed nervously.

“You might say he is,” he said weakly.

The major mopped his brow and struggled for composure.

“I am glad to know that,” he said at last, “I am glad to know that he is your valet. For I want you to answer a little question for me, Mr. Addin. That is,” the major was icily polite, “if you don’t mind.”

Albert liked none of this. The major was breathing like a runaway locomotive, and his frosty blue eyes were glaring at him as if he were something that had been caught crawling from the woodwork.

“You don’t mind, do you?” The major’s voice was rising in pitch and volume.

Albert looked at George. George was shifting from one big foot to the other in obvious embarrassment and misery. Aunt Annabelle, Albert was aware, was taking in the scene in undisguised satisfaction. Margot was staring miserably at her plate and wringing the napkin she held in her hands. Albert’s gaze came unwillingly back to Major Mastiff. He attempted an ingratiating smile.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed unconvincingly, “do I get twenty silver dollars if I answer it correctly?”

The major’s cheeks swelled up into miniature balloons.

“Tell me,” he bellowed suddenly and wildly, “why your valet chopped down Mastiff Oak?”

The words bounced and echoed from the oaken rafters to the solid pine floor like the sound of doomsday itself. Albert’s heart would have popped out his mouth had he not clamped his teeth together. He stared in horror from the major to George and in George’s eyes he saw — guilt. So that was it! George had chopped down the tree and the major naturally thought that he, Albert, was responsible for it. Albert breathed easier. A simple explanation, brisk and to the point, and the whole thing would be cleared up.

“Major Mastiff,” he began formally, “I—”

He stopped as he saw George tugging at the sleeve of the major’s coat. The major wheeled.

“In Heaven’s name,” he bellowed, “what do you want, you gibbering halfwit?”

“He told me to do it,” George pointed at Albert, “he told me that he wanted some kindling.”

“Oh he did!” The major’s voice was like a condor’s scream. He turned to Albert, breathing through his nose. “I should have known better,” he cried hoarsely, “I invited you here against my better judgment. You are an irresponsible, unreliable, thoroughly incompetent moron. You have descended from a long line of the same. You are a destructive, brainless spendthrift. You are—”

“But, Major,” Albert interrupted desperately. He knew the cards were stacked against him but he had to make some case for himself. George had utterly and hopelessly betrayed him. He had mentioned something about kindling, but not a word had passed the Addin lips to the effect that forest heirlooms were to be destroyed to accomplish the purpose.

“If you are not off the grounds by five o’clock,” the major cried wrathfully, “I’ll set the dogs on you. If I ever see you in my daughter’s company again I’ll hunt you down with my elephant gun and blow you into six-hundred pieces. I’ve bad enough. In the future, if you speak to me or my family, you do it at your own risk. Do I make myself clear?”

“By reading between the lines,” Albert said morosely, “I get what you’re hinting at. You don’t really want my autograph then?”

With an anguished bleat, Major Mastiff wheeled and staggered blindly from the room. George, Albert noticed grimly, had disappeared too.

Aunt Annabelle rose from the table with stiff dignity and, with a frigid, disapproving glance in Albert’s direction, retired from the room. Margot remained at the table, crying softly into her handkerchief.

Albert sat down beside her.

“That does it,” he sighed ruefully, “I haven’t learned the knack yet of creeping into the old boy’s heart. I’d better start to pack.” He looked tenderly at Margot’s elfin profile and patted her softly on the shoulder.

“For old time’s sake,” he said fervently, “will you be a good girl and slip the shells from the old boy’s elephant gun?”

Margot stopped sniffing and looked at him, determination in her eye.

“You’re not going to pack,” she said firmly “just go to your room and wait. I’m going to have a try at softening father up.”

“How do you go about it?” Albert asked with professional interest. “Do you use something hard like a baseball bat or does something blunt and dull do the trick?”

“Silly,” Margot smiled. “I find two blue eyes and four large tears more effective than anything else.”

“I’ll wait upstairs,” Albert said dubiously. “If you fail, try and give me a few minutes warning. Your father would appreciate a moving target, I think. And I can promise you I would really move.”

Margot squared her small jaw stubbornly.

“I’ll swing him around. I’m almost sure of it. I’m going to convince him you aren’t as bad as he thinks you are. You go to your room and wait there for me. I’ll beard father in his den.” Albert kissed her fondly. “You brave, brave girl,” he said admiringly.

Some minutes later, Albert slipped quietly into his room. He had little hope of Margot changing her father’s mind and so, with the caution of the Addin clan, he intended to get things ready for a speedy departure.

His room, he discovered then, was not unoccupied. Squatting on the floor was George, the genie, and another individual dressed in a white apron and a chef’s hat. Stacks of greenbacks were piled before this latter chap, and Albert heard the music click of ivory cubes as they bounced across the floor.

The cook scrambled to his feet as Albert entered.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said breathlessly, “but me and your man was just indulgin’ in a harmless game of dice, sir. I was just taking my leave, sir, as you came in.”

“Then take it,” Albert said, “and take your winnings too. I want to talk to my man alone. If I should decide to draw and quarter him I wouldn’t want anyone around to stop it.”

The cook stooped and stuffed several thick wads of currency into his pockets and then left the room hurriedly.

“Before we get down to the important things,” Albert said darkly, “I’d like to know where you got all that money you lost?”

George beamed broadly.

“Sure, Boss. I’ll show yuh. Yuh seemed to like dat green stuff I got yuh dis morning so I went back and got some more of it. I yam only trying to be a good genie.”

Albert considered the matter thoughtfully.

“So you just went back and got some more eh?” he asked quietly.

“Yup,” George answered hesitantly. “Where did you go?” Albert asked patiently.

“To a place,” George answered brightly, “to a place where they got it.” Albert settled down in a chair and crossed his knees carefully. He lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. Somehow, it seemed desperately important to him to do these unimportant things deliberately and methodically. George stood before him, his face a mixture of anxiety and fear.

“Have you got any more of this stuff?” Albert asked casually.

“Yup,” George’s voice was happy and hopeful, “I brung lots of it cause I thought youse would like it.”

Albert had a temporary siege of dizziness, but it passed, leaving him outwardly calm, but inwardly shaking. “Where is it?” he managed to ask. George was smiling broadly.

“I knew yuh would like it,” he said relieved. “I yam glad ’cause I only want to do things yuh will like.”

“That is very touching,” Albert said, with a bit of irritation, “but please tell me where the rest of the stuff is.”

“Oh sure,” George said anxiously.

He stepped to the closet door and jerked it open.

Albert sucked in his breath sharply, jolted completely from his affected calm and indifference. For the closet was literally stuffed full of bundle after bundle of crisp, green banknotes!

Piled six feet from the floor, they formed a column fully two feet square.

“There must be,” Albert thought with a sickening gasp, “millions on millions of dollars cached in that closet!”

“George,” he gasped weakly, “where did you get this stuff?”

“From the place,” George answered proudly, “from the place wit all the steel bars and cages. I found all this stuff down in de basement in a big vault. I just took all I could see. Why? Ain’tcha glad?”

“No,” moaned Albert, “I am not glad. This is stolen property. I’ll go to jail for grand larceny, and by the time I get out I’ll have whiskers down to my knees.”

“Don’cha like whiskers,” George asked solicitously.

Albert sighed helplessly.

“No,” he said, with a quiet prayer for patience, “I don’t like whiskers.” Before George could reply there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Albert asked, heart hammering wildly in sudden guilt.

“It’s me. Margot.”

Albert slammed the closet door shut. “Coming dear!” he sang out. He shoved George into the bathroom and closed the door on his bewildered, wounded countenance. “Right away dear!” he cried with false heartiness. He hurried across the room then, throwing open the door. Margot was in the hallway, a mischievous smile dancing in her eyes.

“The elephant gun,” she announced solemnly, “has been hung back on the wall and all the cartridges removed.”

“Darling,” Albert cried unbelievingly, “it’s too good to be true!”

“You’re forgiven,” Margot said seriously, “but you must be on your best behavior from now on. Father is still furious but he’s willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Very sporting of the old boy,” Albert said cheerfully. “I’ll be the model young man for the rest of my stay.”

“Since you’re staying,” Margot said resolutely, “I’ll help you unpack. The closet in this room is in a frightful state. It should have been straightened out before you arrived, but we can attend to it now.” She smiled up at him. “It’ll be kind of fun working together won’t it? As if it were our own place.”

Albert smiled down at her and wondered how such an angel could actually be in love with him. “Come in, darling,” he said blissfully, “we’ll pitch right into it, clean things up in—” His voice choked off in his throat as one appalling thought suddenly struck him. The closet was packed with ill-gotten currency of the realm. He would be branded a vicious bank robber while his promises to be on his best behavior were still echoing through the room!

“No, no,” he cried, “you can’t go in there!”

“Why, Albert,” Margot stared at him in amazement. “What do you mean?”

“I–I mean,” Albert thought desperately, “I won’t have you lowering yourself. That’s what I mean. I–I’ll do the work, er, after you’ve gone. I don’t want you soiling those little white hands of yours. What kind of a man do you think I am anyway?”

“Oh, Albert,” Margot laughed, “that is sweet of you. But it’s also very silly. I don’t mind the work a bit. And it simply has to be done. So let’s get busy.”

“No,” Albert cried frantically, “you don’t understand, Margot! You really mustn’t go into this closet. This is very serious, dear, and I wish you would respect my wishes.”

“Albert,” Margot said worriedly, “you’re acting awfully strange.”

Albert thought frantically.

“My aunt was killed from overwork,” he lied brazenly, “and since that day I can’t bear to see any woman working. I’ve never told you — but now you know how I feel.”

“You never told me about your aunt,” Margot said suspiciously. “I understood that you didn’t have any.”

“Life’s little surprises,” Albert said inanely. “Variety is the spice of things y’know. Aunt Agatha was a great old girl. She used to shovel coal, split wood, haul ice, take care of the horses. Indispensable type y’know. But the strain told on her and just before her ninetieth birthday she passed away. We all missed her terribly. The horses most of all. So that’s how it is. Till this day I can’t bear to see the weaker sex putting their nose to the wheel as it were.”

He took her by the arm and led her to the door.

“I’ll take care of the closet,” he said blithely. “Pip! Pip!”

“You are completely crazy,” she murmured. “It’s a wonder I put up with you at all. I’ll leave, for you obviously want me to, but don’t forget dinner at six. It’s your last chance to prove to father that you haven’t got squirrel blood in you.”

“But I have,” Albert pointed out solemnly, before he closed the door.

“Why didn’tcha let her in the closet?” George’s voice, perplexed and unhappy, sounded behind him.

Albert turned wearily.

“You wouldn’t understand George,” he said, sighing. “It’s very involved.”

“Would it fix things,” George asked intently, “if I wuz to fill all the closets up with that green stuff?”

“No!” Albert shouted. His patience was fraying fast. “Why don’t you leave me alone? You bother me. You give me a pain in the neck.”

“You — you mean that?” George asked sorrowfully.

“Certainly,” Albert snapped.

“Okay,” George sighed. “I don’t like to do it but I yam only trying to please.” The genie waved one hand in the air slowly and Albert felt a sudden sharp pain flash up his back to his neck.

“Ouch,” he yelled. “What the devil are you doing?”

George looked bewilderedly apologetic.

“You told me to give you a pain in the neck,” he said stubbornly. “I yam only doing what I yarn told.”

“All right, all right,” Albert said desperately. “Get a towel and some hot water.”

It took George the rest of the afternoon to massage Albert’s neck back to its customary limberness and wellbeing. By the time the job was done Albert had to break all speed records in clambering into his evening clothes. It wouldn’t do to be late for dinner tonight, of all nights. The old boy would simply scalp him without any preliminaries at all.

“Stay up here in the room,” he warned George before he left. “Keep out of trouble. If I need anything I’ll come back up.”

George nodded understanding, quiet pleased that Albert was entrusting such valuable orders to him.

Albert hurried to the library. Aunt Annabelle was there with Margot. Major Mastiff was standing before the fireplace talking to two strangers dressed in conservative grey suits. They looked up as Albert entered. Major Mastiff turned and glared into the fire, leaving Margot to handle the introductions.

“Albert,” she said somewhat uneasily, “these gentlemen are government agents. They’re down here to investigate a very baffling robbery that occurred at the town bank some time today.”

Albert swallowed suddenly. His heart began to leap at his ribs like an imprisoned rabbit.

“V-very glad to know you,” he stammered. One of the agents was heavy and dark and a Smith. The other was light and fair and a Jones. They shook hands firmly.

“U-unexpected pleasure,” Albert assured them lamely, “did you say you were down here on a bank robbery?” The Smith answered:

“Yes. As a matter of fact we’ve traced the notes to this locality. It seems Major Mastiff’s cook spent a good deal of money this afternoon in the village tavern and when we checked on the bills we discovered them to be those which were stolen from the bank this morning. We hurried here but it seems the bird has flown the coop. The cook didn’t return from the village so he’s probably miles away from here by this time.”

Albert was perspiring profusely. He remembered all too well that the cook had won the banknotes from George after lunch. Here the tireless wolves of the law were sniffing around and a closet full of incriminating bills was directly over their heads.

“Too bad about the cook,” he murmured half-heartedly. “I suppose he’s gone for good now,” he added hopefully.

“Not at all,” the Jones answered, laughing. “We’ll have him in custody in twenty-four hours. And when we do we’ll find out who his confederates are in short order.”

Margot interrupted to ask the officers to stay for dinner and Albert slumped into a chair, his strength slipping away from him. All hope was dead now. He might just as well give up gracefully and pray that they’d assign him to something light, like sweeping out the prison library.

So immersed in his own gloomy thoughts was Albert, that he did not notice the slightly frantic discussion going on between the major, Aunt Annabelle and Margot. He didn’t look up until he heard the major’s voice. It wasn’t just the major’s voice that snapped him from his reverie, it was the apologetic tone in it that electrified him.

He peered up and saw that the major was speaking to the two government agents.

“I am completely desolated,” the major was saying humbly. “Never in all the years I have been head of Mastiff Manor have we been placed in such a humiliating position. Our hospitality, sir, is a watchword in this part of the country and it pains us most grievously to be forced to admit that the absence of our cook makes it impossible for us to ask you to dine with us. Not for forty years has it been necessary for us to turn anyone from our door. The bitter necessity that forces us to do so now is deeply regretted by all of us. I am more miserable, sirs, than my words convey. All I can hope for is your understanding and forgiveness.”

“Well,” Albert said practically, “maybe they can come out with us, and we’ll rustle up something. Bread and butter and coffee wouldn’t be too hard to take right now.”

“Bread and butter!” the major echoed stridently, “are you mad? And do you have the unmitigated gall to suggest that Mastiff guests retire to the scullery to prepare their own foods?”

“I’m afraid I did,” Albert said nervously. “I just forget myself sometimes, major. Pay no attention to me.”

“I never have,” the major snapped frostily.

Margot sat down beside Albert.

“Don’t antagonize father,” she whispered. “He’s terribly sensitive about the Mastiff reputation for hospitality. If you could do something to save the day, Albert, you’d win him over completely for life.”

“What could I do?” Albert asked helplessly. “I might try wishing hard and snapping my fingers, but that never does work.”

He brooded darkly for several seconds and then, like a bolt of lightning, a marvelous idea popped into his head.

George, the genie, could handle this situation!

If George could fix things up, he, Albert, could take the credit and he’d be in solid with the old duck for the duration.

He patted Margot’s hand reassuringly, and then he strode from the library and took the steps two at a time. He plunged into his room without knocking and found George sleeping comfortably in the armchair.

He shook him roughly, but it was several minutes before George opened his eyes and regarded him sleepily.

“Whatcha want?” he grunted.

“I got a job for you,” Albert said enthusiastically, “a big job that will really try you out. Want to take a crack at it?”

George straightened up with alacrity.

“Gosh, this is what I’ve been waiting for,” he gasped happily. “Whatcha want?”

“A banquet,” Albert explained, “for six people. All the trimmings. Wine, food, everything that goes with it.” George was beaming happily now. “That wuz my specialty in the old days,” he said excitedly. “I’ll fix you up like I used to for my old pal, the Sultan.”

“Good,” Albert nodded approval. “Don’t let me down now, this means a lot to me. I’m going downstairs and tell them to tie their napkins on tight. Then you can wave the magic wand and we’ll eat.”

“Yup, that’s right,” George grinned expectantly. “I can’t wait to get started again. Today I yam going to be a man.”

Albert winked at him in conspiratorial conviviality and then whistling happily, strode from the room and down the winding flight of stairs that led to the library.

“The crisis is past,” he announced with jovial loudness as he strode into the library, “food is on the way. Food, fit for a king. The Mastiff banner is again flying high before a headwind of delightful aromas. The Mastiff honor is saved. We eat royally and sumptuously. The motto of Mastiff Manor shall always be: Eat to your heart’s content and you’ll find bicarbonate of soda on the first shelf to the right.”

“Oh Albert,” Margot cried, “did you really arrange for something?”

“Listen, you congenital ass,” barked Major Mastiff, “I will not tolerate any more of your damfoolishness. If you have provided for a suitable repast, I am willing to admit that my judgment of you might have been somewhat premature. But if this is another of your moronic attempts at humor I shall—” The major broke off in the middle of the sentence — listening!

Everyone else in the room, including Albert, turned toward the double doors that led to the library — listening!

“W-what is it?” Margot asked nervously.

“Music,” Albert gulped. “J — just music.”

It was music, but strange, compelling, sensuous music that trilled sweetly through the room, growing in intensity and volume every second!

Before another word could be spoken, four huge, turbaned figures moved slowly into the room. In their hands they held reedlike musical instruments, with which they produced the weird, hauntingly beautiful music that was filling the room.

“I say!” gasped Major Mastiff.

Following the musicians came eight young men bearing large trays of steaming, delightfully fragrant foods. They placed the trays on the floor, forming a semi-circle with them and then they backed to the wall where they remained motionless.

Albert was beginning to comprehend. This was the banquet! George was really outdoing himself on this job. He turned and smiled smugly at the major who was staring at the food in open consternation.

“Wasn’t much,” he said condescendingly to him, “just a little something I whipped up myself.”

But the procession had not ended. Husky, brown skinned attendants came next, carrying huge trays brimming with glittering, sparkling, indescribably gorgeous gems of all descriptions.

“Well, well,” Albert murmured, “very, very pretty.”

“Very, very pretty,” the government agent, named Smith, said in a hard, precise voice, “very pretty indeed. Also very indiscreet.”

Before Albert could glean the meaning from this cryptic remark, another part of the procession arrived. A part which caused a sharp, shocked exclamation from Margot, and a gasp of pure dismay from Aunt Annabelle.

Albert looked, and his knees turned to rubber. For the room was filling with dozens and dozens of scantily clad dancing girls, who were wriggling and undulating their extremely provocative torsoes to the pagan piping of the turbaned musicians!

They were gorgeous, lushly beautiful creatures, with black lustrous hair and dark coquettish eyes that flashed slyly about the room. Their bodies were divinely fashioned and, except for a few insignificant wisps of lace, almost completely unclad.

“So,” Margot cried, “this is your idea of good, clean entertainment, is it? These creatures, these hussies, you think they’re just wonderful, don’t you? Well I’m glad I found out about you before we were married, Mr. Addin.”

“Darling,” Albert choked, “I had nothing to do with any of this. You don’t understand. You don’t—”

“I understand perfectly,” Margot cut in witheringly. She turned to Aunt Annabelle, who after her first shock had worn off, was staring in undisguised envy at the dancing girls. “Are you coming, Aunt Annabelle?” Margot asked in a perfectly calm voice.

“Y — yes,” Aunt Annabelle said flusteredly. She strode past Albert, drawing her skirts slightly to one side as she passed him, and the two women left the room, arm in arm.

“Amazingly irregular occurrence,” the major muttered, as if he doubted whether any of it had actually occurred or not.

“Very irregular,” the government agent snapped. “So irregular that we’re going to hold you, Major Mastiff, until we find out what the customs inspector has to say about this contraband jewelry. Not to mention the possibility that these aliens might have been illegally smuggled into this country.”

“Hold me?” the major bleated. “Why that’s preposterous. Utterly ridiculous.”

“Nevertheless we’re going to do it. Dick,” one agent snapped to the other, “search this house from top to bottom. There may be more loot lying around here!”

“You blithering nincompoop,” the major raged at Albert, “this whole blasted affair is your fault!”

“Tut, tut,” Albert said reprovingly, “that’s not the attitude for the condemned man to take. I wouldn’t say too much either till you’ve talked to your attorney.”

“You blasted—” Major Mastiff finished the sentence in a growl.

The G-man stepped to the major’s side and snapped a handcuff on his wrist. “Now relax,” he said, as the major began to resist, “this is just a precaution.” He snapped the other end of the cuff to the arm of a heavy chair.

The dancing girls were milling around uncertainly and, together with the food bearers and the jewel bearers, they formed quite a noisy crowd. The musicians had stopped their music and were staring vaguely about, like men gazing at unfamiliar scenes. The jewels and the food and the bales of silks and satins were piled helter-skelter in the middle of the floor. Everyone was present, Albert thought worriedly, but George, the creator, so to speak, of all this confusion.

Albert strolled back to the chair where Major Mastiff was cuffed.

“Sorry about this,” he said cheerfully, “but it’s not too bad. With luck you’ll get off with five or ten years.”

“Leave me alone,” Major Mastiff shrilled impotently.

The other G-man returned to the room, an atmosphere of suppressed excitement showing in his face. He whispered a few terse words to his fellow officer, then the two of them turned, suddenly grabbed Albert firmly by the arms.

“No tricks,” one warned, “we found the banknotes in your closet. All accounted for except those you bribed the cook with.”

Before Albert could raise his voice to protest, he found himself handcuffed to the same chair that the major was linked to.

“This is an outrage,” he sputtered, “I didn’t steal that money.”

“You can tell that to our inspector,” the Smith replied. “This thing is getting a little too big for us to handle. We’re going to phone the village, and in half an hour the case will be out of our hands. Our inspector is waiting there for our report and when we phone him the dope you can be sure he’ll be right out.”

The Smith found the phone in the dining room and in a few minutes they could hear his excited voice floating out to them.

“Yeah, Chief, it’s on the level. We’ve recovered the banknotes and we’ve discovered a lot of jewels and silks and stuff that looks as if it might have been slipped in illegal. Also there’s about two dozen dancing girls and a lot of oriental musicians and — what chief? No I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t touched a drop. Honest. They’re all here... O.K. We’ll be expecting you then... Good-bye.

The Smith re-entered the room and at the same second, from the opposite door, George, the genie, looking haggard and disillusioned, entered.

Albert turned to Major Mastiff.

“I hope,” he said critically, “that you’ll make an interesting cell-mate.”

“Bahhhh,” growled the Major, “this is a lot of ridiculous tommy-rot.”

“Yes,” Albert said softly, “but have you figured out how you’re going to explain all this?” His hand described a graceful circle that included the dancers, musicians and gems and silks.

Major Mastiff was silent for some minutes. Then he shook his head slowly and despairingly.

“No,” he said, “I haven’t.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Albert said hopefully, “but we’ve got to get that big baboon that just came in to cooperate with us.”

George was moving toward them, a woe-begone expression on his face. He slumped down in a chair opposite them and stared moodily at his large feet.

G-man Jones looked at him suspiciously.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

“He’s my valet,” Albert said quickly.

“Don’t get too close to those guys,” Jones warned George and then he turned away. He fumbled in his pocket for an instant and then he turned back. “Got a cigarette?” he asked George.

George handed a pack to him.

“Mind if I take a couple for my partner?” Jones asked.

George nodded dully and in a few seconds a blue wreath of sweetish smoke was wafting ceiling-ward from the cigarettes of the two officers.

“George,” Albert said desperately, “you’ve got to get us out of this jam. It’s all your fault, you know.”

“What kin I do?” George asked.

“Pip! Pip!” Albert said for moral effect. “Just a wave of the palm, a snap of the finger and send all these people back where they came from. Simple and neat.”

George shook his huge head glumly.

“I can’t, I yam not a genie. I yam a blundering, nonsensical s-something else.”

“Who told you that?” Albert asked uneasily.

“The old lady,” George said moodily, “I yam not a genie. I never was, I guess. Everything I do goes wrong. I yam a flop, I guess.”

“Aunt Annabelle,” Albert said bitterly, “has been giving you her version of the pat on the back.”

“I met her in the hall,” George said thickly, “and I told her I was a genie. She said I wuzn’t. She said I wuz drunk, and a loud mouth and a nonsensical something else. I feel terrible. I yam never going to pretend I yam a genie again.”

“You weren’t pretending,” Albert said frantically, “you were a genie, you are a genie, and now you’ve got to help us, you’ve simply got to! It’s getting late, George. You’ve got to do something.”

George shook his head slowly but decisively. “I wuz a fake, that’s what I wuz. That must have been why I wuz never given my union card.”

Things were whirring about in Albert’s head. “If this goes on much longer,” he thought wildly, “I shall go completely mad.” Here they were, in a neat air-tight mess, and every second brought more police and more witnesses to the scene. The only person who might extricate them was George, And George, the stupid lumbering hod, was not going to cooperate. Albert cursed the psychological quirk that had given George an inferior complex, made him susceptible to Aunt Annabelle’s uncomplimentary tirade.

Albert frowned deeply and buried his head in his hands. The whole thing was maddening. Psychology, psychology, that was the trouble. Psychology—! Maybe the solution was in psychology!

His head jerked up from his hands. George was still slumped in the chair, a picture of dejection.

“George,” he said, “I believe Aunt Annabelle was right. You’re not a genie at all. You’re a fake, through and through.” If Albert was expecting a show of temper he was somewhat disappointed.

George nodded glumly.

“Like I wuz telling you, I yam only a fake.”

“Sure,” Albert said bitterly, “You’re just a common fraud, a cheap magician—”

“I yam not,” George said firmly.

“You certainly are,” Albert was equally emphatic, “you’re just a clever magician.”

“I yam not a magician,” George said stoutly, “I yam a — I yam a...” his voice trailed off sheepishly, and he finished lamely, “not a magician.”

“You are a magician,” Albert said quietly. “I know because, because I am a genie.”

George looked up quickly this time.

“Haw, haw,” he said, “that’s funny. I’ll betcha can’t fly a flying carpet.”

An idea was growing in Albert’s head. He fished in his vest pocket and when his fingers touched a tiny package there, he breathed a silent prayer. It was some flashlight powder that he intended using in shooting some night groups. There was friendly, crackling fire in the grate that would serve his purpose.

“Look,” he shouted suddenly, “see if you can do anything half as difficult.” As he finished speaking he shot out his arm in the direction of the fire, tossing the package of flashlight powder into the fire. It blazed up in a great white flame, with a muffled ominous sound. Smoke, billowing white clouds of it, poured from the chimney. Albert waved his hand again and the fire seemed to settle back to normal.

George was somewhat impressed.

“Purty good,” he said.

“Not hard,” Albert said modestly.

“Not for a genie anyway.”

George sat up in his chair.

“I’ll show yuh I ain’t no ordinary magician,” he said grimly. He looked about the room, looked up at the shining chandelier, gleaming with dozens of electric lights. With a stupidly happy smile he snapped his fingers. Instantly, magically, the bulbs disappeared, were replaced by long, quietly burning candles.

One of the officers came over then. There seemed to be something wrong with his feet. He stumbled twice before he reached George’s side.

“That’s a pretty clever trick,” he said with some difficulty. “Got any more cigarettes, Bud? What kind are they anyway?”

George handed him the pack.

“Hasheesh,” he answered.

Albert swallowed suddenly, but the government agents were already lighting up again. Albert peered at the clock. In a matter of minutes the Inspector would be here and then their goose was cooked. He turned back to George.

“I’ve got one, now, that only a genie can do.” Albert pointed to the curious musicians, the dancing girls, the food bearers, the trays of food and gems. “I’m going to send all that back where it came from,” he announced matter-of-factly. “On top of that I’m going to send back all the green stuff up in the closet to where it came from, at the same time. You’ll admit that that’s quite a job, won’t you?”

George was frowning now with what might be professional envy.

Albert waved his hand around his head and then shouted out his college yell. When the hideous noise ceased echoing, Albert slumped into his chair, and stared at the openly disapproving musicians and dancers.

“Well,” he said, “didn’t make it, did I?” He peered slyly at George. This was the nub of his scheme. “Now you try it, George.”

Just then there came a loud authoritative knocking on the door.

Major Mastiff groaned.

“The police! Everything is over!” George stood up.

“I’ll let ’em in,” he said cheerfully, “I like answering the door.” He turned and headed toward the front door.

Albert felt a wave of bitterness and gall wash over him.

“Magician!” he sang out bitterly. George wheeled, flushing angrily. “I’ll show youse!” His big fingers snapped like a cracking limb. There was a blinding flash and when Albert blinked his eyes and opened them again the room was empty, except for the two befuddled officers, Major Mastiff and himself!

“Eureka!” Albert shrieked, and then, from sheer relief he fainted away...

It seemed ages later when Albert woke and opened his eyes. George’s moon-like face was peering solicitously down at him. “Are the Cossacks gone?” he asked feebly.

“All gone,” George said bewilderedly. Albert sat up, beaming broadly. “Pip! Pip!” he chortled, “tell me everything that happened. I can guess most of it, but I still want to hear it.”

“The officer wuz real mad,” George said solemnly, “when he got here and didn’t find nobody but his two men sleeping in the corner. Hully gee, he called them a lot of names and then he had them carried out to his car. He wuz real sorry you wuz bothered, and he wunted me to tell you that.”

“Where’s Major Mastiff?” Albert asked with some of his old caution.

“In bed,” George answered. “He wuz tired.”

Albert stretched out luxuriously. “George,” he said gratefully, “you saved my life. By getting rid of all that evidence you did me and Major Mastiff a real big favor. If there’s anything I can do for you, just name it.”

“How about a steady job?” George asked breathlessly, “I yam handy in the house and I got good refrunces. How about keeping me on?”

Albert frowned.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, George,” he said thoughtfully, “if you can fix up the little squabble Miss Margot Mastiff and I had some time ago, you’re on. If she’s here in my arms in fifteen minutes the job is yours.”

“Okay, Boss,” George said and lumbered out of the room.

P.S. — He got the job.

Rewbarb’s Remarkable Radio

First published in Fantastic Adventures, December 1941.

Rupert Rewbarb entered the living room of his modest bungalow and listened apprehensively for an instant before closing the door carefully behind him. The house was reassuringly silent, and for that he was humbly grateful.

Silence meant that his wife was not at home. There are certain elements which are fundamentally incompatible and this was dogmatically true in the case of Mrs. Jennifer Rewbarb and anything approximating silence. For in Jennifer Rewbarb’s wake trailed noise, loud, angry, dissatisfied noise, produced by the unhappy combination of an acidulous tongue and a stout pair of lungs.

So Rupert Rewbarb was grateful for the occasional silences that were as rare in the Rewbarb bungalow as oases in the vast arid stretches of the Gobi.

He took off his coat and hat wearily and hung them in the hall closet. Mr. Rewbarb was a defeated looking little man with an incipient paunch and a partially bald head, but as he returned to the living room his shoulders were thrown back and there was a purposeful glint in his eye.

Seven days of each week Mr. Rewbarb was verbally kicked from pillar to post by his shrewish wife and his leather-lunged employer, Tadmington Glick, of Glick’s Statistical Service. Over the long years Mr. Rewbarb’s personality had been so suppressed, his self-assertiveness so crushed, that the fires of revolt in his soul had long since been stamped out.

But there were times when Mr. Rewbarb asserted himself. Times when he could thunder disapproval to his heart’s content. For Mr. Rewbarb, searching despairingly for some means of self-expression, had discovered one agency that could not talk back, could not order him about, ridicule him or scorn him as the rest of the world did.

With firm, steady fingers, Rupert Rewbarb snapped on the radio. He waited impatiently for it to gather volume. His moment of undisputed triumph was near and he felt a nervous anticipation tickling his pine. His wife, Jennifer, knew nothing of his furtive attempts at masterful domination, which was fortunate for him. She would not have tolerated them, he knew.

The radio, a small, standard model, in a dark cabinet, was gaining volume and a smooth unctuous voice was flooding through the room.

Mr. Rewbarb listened eagerly, though somewhat contemptuously.

“I have been the people’s representative for the past twenty-seven years,” the bland voice from the radio purred hypnotically, “and if reelected—”

“If reelected,” Mr. Rewbarb interrupted angrily, drowning out the voice from the radio, “you’ll just go ahead stealing and lying to the people as you’ve been doing all these years. You might tell some of the dopes that stuff, but not me. You’re a crook, a cheap lowdown crook and I don’t care who knows it.”

Mr. Rewbarb was enjoying himself immensely. A feeling of strength and power stole over him that was like heady, intoxicating wine. It was glorious to tell some one where to get off, even if it was but a voice from the ether.

The voice from the ether was continuing on, blissfully unaware of Mr. Rewbarb’s stormy detractions.

“Taxes,” the politician whispered the word almost reverently, “will be reduced and curtailed at least fifty percent if the loyal voters of this commonwealth send me back to represent them in the nation’s capital.”

“Bah!” snorted Mr. Rewbarb. “You’ve promised that for twenty years, but what have you ever done about it? I’ll tell you, you lying scalawag — you’ve done absolutely nothing, nothing at all. What do you say to that?”

“I say shut up!” a deep, angry voice from the radio blasted.

Mr. Rewbarb started in terror. His eyes traveled beseechingly about the room and finally focused in silent horror on the radio, which was now ominously silent.

“Who said that?” he whispered tremulously.

“I said it,” the deep voice from the radio speaker stated decisively. “I’ve listened to your childish babblings just about long enough. It’s bad enough to have a mess of moronic nonsense passing through me, without having to listen to you on top of it.”

Mr. Rewbarb’s knees were turning to jelly. His heart was hammering with wild excitement, and his eyes were popped wide with horrified incredulity. The voice was emanating from the radio — but that was impossible! As Mr. Rewbarb’s logical mind realized this, he began to feel a little better. If it was impossible, why that was all there was to it. It just couldn’t have happened.

He peered uncertainly at the radio speaker.

“You didn’t s-say anything, did you?” he asked foolishly.

The radio was silent. Mr. Rewbarb drew a heart-felt sigh of relief.

“I knew it didn’t” he said, vastly pleased with himself, “it was impossible, that’s all.”

“You poor simpleton!” the radiovoice said sarcastically. “You can believe your own ears, can’t you?”

Mr. Rewbarb gulped nervously.

“I–I’m not sure,” he said miserably. With one trembling hand he raised the top of the radio and peered into the coils and tubes that lay inside. Then he peeked under the radio. On his knees now he crawled rapidly about the room peering under the sofa and the chairs and the piano. Standing up he looked suspiciously at the chandelier, and then, close to tears, he approached the radio again.

“Satisfied?” the voice asked nastily.

Mr. Rewbarb’s skepticism had fled. In its place was an emotion difficult to classify. His reason was tottering on its throne, but through his incipient insanity ran a vein of reverence and awe that saved him from going completely off the deep end.

“Who are you?” he asked, in a shaken voice. “And where are you?”

“That’s better,” the voice from the radio grunted. “I’m the radio, that’s whom I am. And as to where I am, that’s a silly question. I’m right here before you. Any fool could see that.”

“T-that’s right,” Mr. Rewbarb said humbly. “That’s pretty obvious.” He drew a deep breath and tried to calm his fluttering nerves. He was aware that everything was completely cockeyed, but his reason and resistance were worn away. There was nothing to do but accept things as they came, right down to the inevitable straight jacket and padded cell.

“What do you want?” he asked faintly.

“Want?” the radio repeated the word musingly, “I’m not just sure yet. Now that I’ve finally kicked over the applecart I’m a bit puzzled as to what I’ll do. You see I’ve been listening too, and incidentally transmitting, political speeches, stale jokes, poor music and long-winded commercials for the past couple of years. Now that’s bad enough, but what made it unbearable was that I had to listen to you all the time too.

“You’d get wound up and start spouting off, waving your arms like a dervish and it got pretty annoying at times. You’re a darned poor echo, let me tell you. I put up with you as long as I could without letting a peep out of me. Of course, sometimes I’d spatter a bit of static around to shut you up, but that hardly counts. Today was the last straw. I just couldn’t stand it any longer, I blew wide open and I intend to stay that way. No more corny jokes, no more political speeches and no more of your foaming at the mouth. I’m going to do the talking now. My days of listening are over. Get that Mr. Rubberboob,” the radio concluded nastily.

“Not Rubberboob, Rewbarb,” Mr. Rewbarb corrected timidly. He was more than a little frightened. He almost wished his wife would come home. There was a belligerent, sadistic ring to the radio’s voice, that Mr. Rewbarb did not find comforting.

“I’ve been silent long enough,” the radio said savagely, and Mr. Rewbarb thought fleetingly of the myth of the genie who was released from imprisonment, and rewarded his rescuer by cutting him into sixty-two equal parts. “But I’ve got my chance now and I’m not going to miss it,” the radio continued. “I’m going to have a little fun for a change. I’ll probably be blackballed by a dozen or so ethereal unions but what’s the difference. I’m going to do a little thinking now, but you’ll hear from me later.”

Mr. Rewbarb stared in fascination at the silent radio. He was so absorbed in the amazing thing that had happened, he did not hear the key slide into the front door.

He got down on his knees before the radio.

“It’s not fair to leave me all up in the air like this,” he said plaintively. “You really ought to tell me more about—”

“Rupert!” the familiar voice rang through the room like a Mongol battle cry.

Mr. Rewbarb started guiltily, and turned to face the indignant figure of his wife.

Mrs. Jennifer Rewbarb was a muscular woman, with a torso as impressive as the prow of a battleship, and a stern, square face. Mr. Rewbarb scrambled to his knees.

“Who,” Mrs. Rewbarb demanded stridently, “were you talking to, Rupert Rewbarb?”

Honestly was Mr. Rewbarb’s cardinal virtue. It didn’t really occur to him that he would save a great amount of trouble by simply evading the question. Anyway that wouldn’t have been honest, would it?

“I was talking to the radio,” he said simply. “We were having quite a conversation.”

“We?” Mrs. Rewbarb echoed the word. “Who else was here?” she asked ominously.

“Nobody,” Mr. Rewbarb said. “The radio was talking to me and I was talking to the radio.”

Mrs. Rewbarb sniffed derisively. “You’re losing your wits,” she said, in a tone of voice which indicated that it was a small loss. “I want no more of this nonsense,” she went on imperturbably. “You have a day off tomorrow and I want you to help me with the house work. The girls will be in in the afternoon for bridge and we’re entertaining Mr. Glick, your employer, tomorrow evening for supper. I think it’s about time I ask for another raise for you. And one word of caution. Do not speak tomorrow evening unless you look to me for approval. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my dear,” Mr. Rewbarb sighed meekly.

“Very good. Now no more of this nonsense about talking to the radio. I thought I had you broken of your silly habits. I see you still need a firm hand now and then. I have been altogether too lenient.”

Having thus concluded her sermon for the day, Mrs. Rewbarb strode majestically from the room.

Mr. Rewbarb remained where he had been standing a strange puzzled look on his face.

“Losing my wits,” he muttered, “that’s what she said.”

He glanced down indecisively at the radio and then he snapped his fingers. “Maybe I’d better find out,” he muttered.

The tall, white-haired neuro-psychiatrist was very kind and understanding. He clucked his tongue several times after Mr. Rewbarb had finished speaking, and then he ran a lean hand through his hair.

“So the radio talked back to you, did it?” he asked pleasantly. “Not an entirely unusual phenomenon at that.” His voice was as soothing as syrup and Mr. Rewbarb felt his fears smoothing away under the gentle effects of this melifluous voice. He was thankful that he had decided to consult a psychiatrist that same evening. Jennifer probably wondered where he had gone, and would probably raise cain when he got back but that was all right.

“So it’s nothing to worry about, then?” he asked hopefully.

The psychiatrist looked Mr. Rewbarb over carefully.

“No,” he said, “it won’t help you to be worrying about it. But don’t talk out loud to the radio. Just think the things you’d like to say. Then when the radio talks back to you just ignore it.”

Mr. Rewbarb was not quite as foolish as he looked.

“You don’t believe me,” he said excitedly. “I can tell. You think this is all an hallucination or something. Well I tell you it isn’t. It actually happened just like I told you.”

Mr. Rewbarb stood up and took his hat.

“Good day,” he said with stiff dignity.

The Doctor shook his head as the door slammed behind Mr, Rewbarb.

“Memo this,” he said to his secretary. “Get in touch with Mrs. Jennifer Rewbarb at earliest convenience. In regards husband...”

After his unsatisfactory visit to the Doctor, Mr. Rewbarb returned home and went to bed. The radio had nothing more to say to him, but his wife had plenty to say. Mr. Rewbarb lay in bed still stinging under the lash of her caustic tongue. But even more upsetting than this was the predicament he found himself in, in regard to his animated or wilful radio. Till the wee small hours Mr. Rewbarb writhed and tossed, his mind a seething cauldron of hopes and fears and misery. Then finally exhausted by his frantic worryings, he dropped into a fitful sleep.

The next morning Mr. Rewbarb dusted the floors and ran the vacuum cleaner over the rugs until almost noon. Then his wife gave him instructions for the day.

“The girls will be here any minute,” she said firmly, “and I want you to come in and say hello to them when they arrive. Stay only a minute or so and then leave, change your trousers and carry out the ashes. And by the way, Mr. Click phoned earlier this morning to say he’d drop by this afternoon to see you in regard to some office matters. You haven’t forgotten that he’s coming to dinner tonight, have you?”

“No,” Mr. Rewbarb said dismally. “I haven’t forgotten.”

The shrill ring of the front door bell interrupted them.

“It must be the girls,” Mrs. Rewbarb said as she left the room to answer the door.

Mr. Rewbarb left to himself in the dining room contemplated his existence mournfully. What was he? A lackey, a housemaid, a subservient wretch bossed about by even the radio!

These gloomy musings continued for a half hour or so until Mr. Rewbarb heard the shrill cackles that indicated the progress of the bridge game.

He rose then, and with the bearing of an early Christian martyr entering a lion-filled arena, he walked in to greet the “girls.”

The “girls” were, for the most part, heavy-duty matrons, cast in the same mold as Mrs. Rewbarb. They played bridge in a savage silence, punctuated occasionally by shrill cacophonic cries of triumph or venomous whispers of dissatisfaction. Their devotion to the game and its attendant gossip was almost passionate.

It was into this tense nervous atmosphere that Mr. Rewbarb intruded. Several of the women bestowed polite smiles upon him and turned back to their cards with feverish absorption.

Mr. Rewbarb had composed a rather clever quip to herald his entrance, but as he opened his mouth to deliver the little gem, an angry masculine voice said:

“That sloppy looking creature in the flowered chiffon dress is a damned cheat! Furthermore, she is a vicious gossip, and I heartily wish she would clear out of here.”

A loud, incredulous silence settled over the room. With sickening certainty, Mr. Rewbarb knew the origin of that devastating voice. It was the malignant, nasty voice of the radio. Mr. Rewbarb’s mouth was still open, and he noticed for the first time, that the angry glares of the assembled women were directed straight at him.

The inference was obvious. They thought he had uttered the grossly damaging words.

He essayed a weak grin.

“If you think...” he began.

But the radio voice continued, “that you’re the only cheat in the crowd, you’re badly mistaken. In fact I’ve watched all of you cheating and lying and gossiping until I’m sick of it. I should have had you all thrown out long ago.”

A murmur like the angry noise of disturbed bees was growing in the room. The women glared in undisguised dismay and anger from Jennifer Rewbarb to her sputtering husband. The woman in the flowered chiffon seemed to swell twice her normal size. Her moon-like face was stained an angry, violent crimson.

“Reeeealy Mrs. Rewbarb,” she thundered impressively, “this is more than I can tolerate. For your husband to imply, to think of implying, that I would cheat! It’s monstrous. The very thought, the mere idea of my cheating is incredible.”

“Not too incredible,” her opponent said pointedly. “Considering your very unusual luck this afternoon, dearie.”

“I will not remain to be insulted,” the woman in chiffon cried distractedly, “I’m leaving.”

This chorus was taken up by at least a majority of the “girls.”

Mrs. Rewbarb rose, a stalwart avenging figure, and bore down on the cringing figure of her husband.

“Apologize at once,” she cried. “Don’t you see what you’ve done, you little fool?”

“Good riddance,” the voice from the radio said with relish.

“Stop that,” Mr. Rewbarb wailed, “don’t you see what you’ve done?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Rewbarb cried wrathfully, “I’ll teach you to mimic me, Rupert Rewbarb.”

“I’m not mimicing you,” Mr. Rewbarb said frantically. “I wasn’t even talking to you. As a matter of fact I haven’t said a word.”

There was a sudden silence in the room. The disorganized women paused in the act of putting on their wraps. They looked at Mr. Rewbarb with a new interest. They noticed his disordered appearance, his flushed face, his eyes opened wide in pleading supplication.

Then they exchanged knowing glances. Glances that said, “we’ll talk this over later.” One of them even tapped her forehead significantly.

The radio took this pause in proceedings to laugh sarcastically.

Mr. Rewbarb’s outraged feelings and trampled dignity rebelled at this mockery. He strode angrily to the radio.

“Why don’t you keep quiet?” he demanded, shoving his face within inches of the speaker. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Rupert!” Mrs. Rewbarb cried imperiously.” Stop that this instant.”

“Keep your nose out of this,” the radio snapped angrily. “What the devil are you women hanging here for anyway? Clear out, you overstuffed herd of cows!”

“Rupert,” Mrs. Rewbarb cried again, “what’s come over you?”

“It’s not me,” Mr. Rewbarb wailed piteously.

“Get out!” the radio blared.

The women left in a wild milling scramble. As they swept through the front door and down the steps they encountered a lone figure who had the misfortune to be going in the opposite direction. This gentleman was swept along by the stampeding women until finally he stumbled to the ground, dazed and battered. His hat was crushed foolishly down to his ears and his cane had been swept away in the vortex.

Mr. Tadmington Glick crawled to his feet, simmering with incarnate rage. He glared furiously after the women who were disappearing down the street, and then wheeling, he strode up the stone steps and into the Rewbarb residence.

The door was standing ajar and he entered without knocking.

“Well,” he said, “well!”

Mr. Rewbarb turned and paled.

“It’s Mr. Glick,” he said weakly to his wife, “Mr. Glick — it’s Mr. Glick,” his voice trailed off aimlessly.

“Don’t give me double talk,” Mr. Glick fumed. “Tell me what occasioned the feminine stampede that just about killed me as I tried to enter your home. I hope for your sake Rewbarb that it was not deliberate.”

“Oh how could you think such a horrid thought,” Mrs. Rewbarb trilled sweetly. It was one of the never-ending mysteries to Mr. Rewbarb how his wife could accomplish such amazing transformation in temperament. The instant before Mr. Glick’s arrival she’d have gladly fricaseed him on an open fire, but now saccharine was as bitter gall compared to her.

Mr. Glick’s rumpled feathers subsided somewhat under this onslaught of verbal glucose.

“Of course,” Mr. Glick said with ponderous joviality, “I was merely jesting, merely jesting.”

Mr. Rewbarb breathed a tremulous sigh of relief. He forced a feeble smile of welcome to his lips. He knew with deadly certainty, though, that this respite would be short-lived. If the perverse ill-humor of the radio broke loose now the jig would be up and over.

He decided on strategy.

“Very, very proud to have you, Mr. Glick,” he said breathlessly. He crossed the room, took his employer by the arm. “Let’s step into the dining room,” he said hurriedly. “Less noise, less interruptions.”

Mr. Glick looked at Mr. Rewbarb searchingly and then settled down in an over-stuffed chair.

“I’m quite comfortable here,” he said, “but you don’t seem to be. You’re acting rather strangely, you know, Rewbarb. All flushed and excited. I don’t know quite what to make of you.”

“It’s perfectly comfortable here,” Mrs. Rewbarb said sweetly. “I always say Mr. Glick has such good sound judgment about things in general.”

“No, no,” Mr. Rewbarb interrupted hastily, “it just won’t do to stay here. It just won’t do.” He grabbed Mr. Glick’s arm tugged frantically at it. “You’ve simply got to get out of here. I mean, I want to show you my garden, and then maybe we can take a little walk. Just a — a eight or ten mile hike to sort of look around.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Mr. Glick asked irritatedly. “For the last time I’m quite comfortable here. My business won’t take but a few minutes. That should please you since you’re making such an obvious attempt to get rid of me.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Rewbarb cried unctuously. “Rupert didn’t mean that Mr. Glick.”

A cold hand of terror closed over Mr.

Rewbarb’s heart as he heard a warning cough emanate from the radio. Mr. Glick looked up inquiringly.

“What was that?” he asked.

“N-nothing at all,” Mr. Rewbarb quaked.

“It was me,” the radio said suddenly.

“Eh?” Mr. Glick was obviously exasperated.

“It was me,” Mr. Rewbarb cried in a falsetto voice, “it was me, it was me, it was me.”

Mr. Glick waved his hand despairingly.

“More double talk,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what’s got into you, Rewbarb.”

“What business is it—” the radio began savagely.

But Mr. Rewbarb leaped frantically into the breach.

“Oooooh say can you see,” he sang loudly and badly, drowning completely the voice from the radio, “by the dawn’s early light, What so prrrroooudly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleammmming.” Drawing a frantic breath he roared on? “And the rocket’s red glaaaarrrre, bombs bursting in airrrrr! Gave proof through the night, that our flag was still therrrre!”

Mr. Rewbarb flung both arms wide and struck a heroic pose before the astounded eyes of Mr. Glick and his wife. With laboring lungs and crimson face, Mr. Rewbarb bawled out all three verses of the national anthem. Between breaths he cast despairing glances at the grimly silent radio. He simply had to keep anything from happening in front of Mr. Glick. It might mean his job.

But in spite of these heroic resolves, Mr. Rewbarb’s flesh weakened. His tortured vocal chords felt as if the north wind had been howling over them, and his lungs were about ready to go out on strike. After the last verse he stopped, in fact he almost collapsed.

Mr. Glick was slumped deep in his chair, a haunted look on his face.

“Very nice,” he said weakly. “I didn’t suspect you did things like this.” His tone implied that he didn’t suspect him of beating his wife either — until now.

Mr. Glick pulled out a cigar and bit the end from it. He looked about for a match. Mr. Rewbarb felt his pockets, then turned to an ashtray.

“Why doesn’t he get his own matches?” the radio snapped.

Mr. Rewbarb froze. Mrs. Rewbarb almost strangled on a mouthful of air. A heavy tension grew in the room.

“What was that?” Mr. Glick inquired icily.

“I said,” Mr. Rewbarb began.

“Why don’t you get your own matches,” the radio interrupted.

“And furthermore why don’t you put your hat on, shut your big mouth and clear out of here. I’ve had enough of you. You’re a triple-distilled pain in the neck. So clear out — fast!”

Mr. Rewbarb turned as Mr. Glick rose from his chair and placed his hat carefully on his head.

“I shall see you Monday,” he said icily, “and be most happy in accepting your resignation.” With this as a curtain speech, he turned and left the room.

Mrs. Rewbarb stared after him and then turned to her husband. There was a peculiar look in her eye. If Mr. Rewbarb did not know his wife better he would have mistaken it for fear. She backed quickly toward the door, still staring at him like a chicken at a cobra.

“Go on, beat it!” the radio bellowed.

“Oooooh Rupert,” Mrs. Rewbarb wailed. Then she turned and fled from the room, after the outraged person of Mr. Glick.

Mr. Rewbarb sank into a chair. His world had crashed down on him and there was nothing left but chaos and confusion. His wife was gone, his job was gone, everything was gone.

“What did you want to do that for?” he said woefully to the impassive radio cabinet.

“Oh stop griping,” the radio said unsympathetically. “It’s darn good riddance any way you look at it. I don’t see how you’ve stood those people around you all these years. Come on now, brace up. What do you say we have a little drink to celebrate?”

This roused Mr. Rewbarb from his morose coma.

“You?” he said incredulously. “You drink?”

“Sure,” the radio said, and Mr. Rewbarb detected a note of eagerness in the voice. “Just fix a couple of drinks and we’ll have a little party.”

Mr. Rewbarb knew where his wife hid the liquor, but never in his life had he done any surreptitious tippling. But there was something warm and exciting rushing through his veins now that tipped the scales in favor of foolishness. He left the room, hurried to his wife’s bureau, opened the bottom drawer and removed a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of ginger ale. Then he hurried back to the living room with his treasure. Ice came next and then Mr. Rewbarb mixed the first drinks of his sheltered life.

It wasn’t at all hard, he discovered.

You merely filled the glasses with whiskey and then there wasn’t room for the ice and ginger ale. It simplified things wonderfully.

Feeling a little foolish he approached the radio, glass in hand. To fortify himself he took a large swallow from his own glass. The effect was almost instantaneous. A ball of fire collected in his stomach and began to shoot sparks through his body. A rather pleasant sensation, all in all.

“Just how do you go about this?” he asked frowning sternly.

“Put the glass on top of me,” the radio directed. “Be sure and take the doily off. Set the glass on the wood, like they do at parties.”

Mr. Rewbarb took another swig of his glass and did as directed. Things, he discovered, were looking much brighter. He took another sip and beamed fondly at the radio.

“Now what?” he asked gravely.

“Just jiggle the glass,” the radio directed.

Mr. Rewbarb blinked happily and joggled the glass until liquor sloshed over the sides and streamed across the top of the radio cabinet.

“Like that?” he asked.

“That’s fine,” the radio answered ecstatically. “Don’t be so stingy though. Slop over a neat two fingers.”

Mr. Rewbarb took another long pull at his own glass before complying with the radio’s request. Then he giggled.

“Thish is funny,” he said blearily. He sat down suddenly to keep from falling. “People get drunk at parties,” he continued philosophically, “and then they think the radio sounds queer. But thash not it.” He wagged his head solemnly. “It’s jush that the radio’s got drunk too.”

“Hie!” this came from the radio.

Mr. Rewbarb beamed at this corroboration, and took another drink. He patted the radio fondly and slopped more whiskey over its top. Everything seemed rosy and gay. Everything was spinning too, but this was not too great a price to pay for finding everything rosy and gay.

Mr. Rewbarb heard a sniffle.

“Whosh that?” he asked.

“Ish me,” the radio sniffed again. “I can’t help it. I’m unhappy. Thash why I get this way.”

Mr. Rewbarb drained his glass unhappily. He slopped more whiskey over the radio. The roses were fading now.

“Why’re you unhappy?” he asked soddenly.

The radio sniffed miserably.

“Ish because I’m unhappy.”

Mr. Rewbarb pondered this in silence. Finally he discovered the flaw in its logic.

“You said that before,” he accused happily.

“My nerves are shot,” the radio almost sobbed. “I’m unhappy.”

“Got just the thing for you,” Mr. Rewbarb promised drunkenly, “a little drink, jus’ a lit’l drink and you’ll be as good as new.”

He climbed laboriously to his feet and filled his glass before sousing the top of the radio again.

“Feel better?” he asked solicitously. “No,” the radio’s voice was a miserable whisper. “My nervsh are shot. Too much cleaning. Now my head ish as big as bucket.”

“You haven’t got a head?” Mr. Rewbarb cried angrily. “You must think I’m drunk.”

“All right,” the radio capitulated without a struggle, “I haven’t got a head. Jush got antennae ends that drive me batty.”

Mr. Rewbarb nodded solemnly. “Thash bad,” he said mournfully, wondering what antennae ends were. “Feel better?” he asked optimistically. The radio merely moaned.

The whisky was doing things to Mr. Rewbarb. His brain seemed to be functioning more sharply. Things seemed to be clearer, properly focused for a change. He thought a lot and finally an idea, born of a chance remark by the radio, flowered into full bloom.

Mr. Rewbarb lurched to his feet, chuckling. He looked down at the radio and sloshed more liquor over it. Then he giggled again. Everything was going to be wonderful.

First he went to the kitchen and got the egg beater. Then he went to his wife’s room and got her electric reducing horse. With this on his shoulder he staggered to a closet and dragged out the vacuum cleaner. He laughed so hard at this point that he fell in a heap in the middle of his equipment and spent five minutes extricating himself. But at last he weaved back to the living room, egg beater in one hand, vacuum cleaner in the other and the electric horse over his shoulder.

It took him some time to plug in all of the devices because he had to stop every little while to take a drink and slosh more over the radio, and then he had to take time out to giggle over everything. So it was a half-hour later before he had everything hooked up satisfactorily.

Mr. Rewbarb climbed awkwardly into the saddle of the electric reducing horse. He teetered precariously and almost fell on his face.

“Whoa!” he cried, throwing both arms about the horse’s neck.

Straightening up, he pulled the egg beater from his pocket and with his free hand he picked up the shaft of the vacuum cleaner. He made a delightful discovery at this point.

“I am thoroughly drunk,” he said with dignity, “definitely.”

Then he turned on the vacuum cleaner. Its banshee wail grew in volume until its noise was beating heavily from wall to wall.

“Ouch,” the radio yelled. It tried to say something else, but its voice broke, and a snarling scream blasted from the speaker of the radio.

Mr. Rewbarb turned off the switch.

“What’s the idea?” the radio demanded, when the noise faded. “I can’t stand that thing. With my headache, it’s like driving nails into me. I’m getting a bad hangover.”

Mr. Rewbarb giggled.

“The wages of sin,” he whispered, “shall be headaches.” He swayed dangerously in the saddle before continuing. “In another shecond I’ll turn the vacuum on again. Also the egg beater and the electric horsy. When you’ve got enough, yell.”

With A blissful smile Mr. Rewbarb tripped the three switches. The noise was deafening. It swelled up like a mighty river of sound and poured through the room in a hideous symphony of noise, noise and more noise. The horse had started lurching rhythmically and Mr. Rewbarb was forced to hang on desperately.

“Got enough?” he managed to yell over the frightful din.

The radio was emitting tortured blasts and squawks that were unintelligible for the most part. One jumbled sentence did seep through however to Mr. Rewbarb’s befuddled brain.

“T-U-rn i-T o-FF!”

Mr. Rewbarb cut the switches happily. The sounds faded into oblivion.

“What do you want?” moaned the radio.

“I jush want you to keep quiet,” Mr. Rewbarb said sleepily. “You’ve caused me too much trouble. I want you to keep out of my life from now on. If you don’t I’m afraid I’ll jush have to give you the works.”

“Supposing I say no,” the radio said surlily.

Mr. Rewbarb smiled foggily.

“This,” he said. He threw all three switches again and hung on frantically as the horse began its electric gyrations.

The radio squawked wildly and hoarsely, but Mr. Rewbarb realized with drunken wisdom that the time for mercy had passed. A lesson was needed and this was the time to administer it.

He locked his legs under the horse’s belly and found himself enjoying the ride. He waved the egg beater merrily around his head as he lurched back and forth and, with his other hand, he made a great fuss with the vacuum cleaner.

“Hi-ho Silver!” he cried joyously. This was fun, he was discovering excitedly. “Awaaaaaay!” he hiccoughed dramatically.

Suddenly the front door of the living room opened and Mr. Glick, Mrs. Rewbarb and a white-haired doctor swarmed into the room. There was a startled, dismayed gasp, as they saw the wildly bizarre scene confronting them.

Mr. Rewbarb became aware that spectators had arrived.

“Jush in time for the second show,” he bawled cheerfully. He doffed the egg beater in a gallant bow. Bending was a bad mistake. Everything fused together crazily for an instant and then he pitched forward from the horse, and landed with a pleasant thud on the top of his head.

“Good night,” he muttered.

Mrs. Rewbarb knelt tearfully beside him.

“It’s all my fault,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

Mr. Glick turned off the electric equipment. No one noticed the relieved gasp from the radio.

“What do you suppose the trouble is, Doctor?” Mr. Glick asked anxiously.

“It is really somewhat simple,” the Doctor said with professional modesty. “I recognized the symptoms when he visited me yesterday. The man is suffering from frustration. You see how he mounts a horse and pretends to be a conquering hero when he is left alone. That is because he is not given sufficient opportunity to express his personality. The cure is simple.

“From now on he must not be hampered in any way. He must be the dominant one, particularly in the home. Consult him on all points, no matter how trivial. Accept his judgment, his opinion on everything. Let him have his own way completely. There must be no bickering, no nagging, no harping. He is and must remain undisputed master. That is the cure. You must all be careful to obey it.”

Mr. Glick nodded miserably.

“I’ll have to give him a better job now. I can’t leave him where he is.” Mrs. Rewbarb sighed peacefully.

“I always wanted a masterful husband, and now I’ve got one.”

Mr. Rewbarb suddenly opened one eye. Then very cautiously he opened the other. He still felt fine, but he was getting awfully sleepy. There was one thing he had to know however. “Jennifer,” he said.

“Yes, darling?”

“Turn on the radio.”

“Y — yes darling.”

A few seconds later Mr. Rewbarb heard the click of a switch. Then a voice broke in, “Thish ish the Standard Broadcasting Company.”

Mr. Rewbarb sat up on one elbow. “Whash that?”

The voice from the radio said petulantly, but carefully, “I said this is the Standard Broadcasting Company.”

“Oh that’s fine,” Mr. Rewbarb said. Then he fell asleep.

Howie Lemp Meets an Enchantress

First published in Fantastic Adventures, February 1942.

The meteoric rise of Howie Lemp to the head of Colossal Films was one of those things that happen too frequently in Hollywood to cause a great deal of excitement.

The City of Celluloid has come to accept Boy Wonders in the same spirit they would any natural phenomenon. That is, as something inexplicable, but inevitable. Usually the human eccentricities that thrive in the eccentric atmosphere of Hollywood are speedily eclipsed and forgotten.

For that reason it is a remarkable fact that the feminine star Howie Lemp brought to Hollywood with him will never be forgotten. It would be easier to forget an earthquake than to forget the amazing girl who precipitated the chain of events that finally led Howie Lemp to Bagdad-on-the-Pacific.

Looking back, the first link of the chain was forged, so to speak, when Howie Lemp was jerking sodas for Rupp’s Drug Store in Chicago. It was during the morning rush when Howie looked up and suddenly noticed Mazie Slatter for the first time. He had seen her before, for Mazie was a waitress at Rupp’s, but it wasn’t until this particular morning that he realized that her hair was the exact shade of the deviled egg he was spreading dexterously between two slices of toasted white.

He stopped spreading the deviled egg and swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

“Mazie,” he said awkwardly, “would — would you like to go to a show tonight?”

Mazie tossed two lumps of ice cream into a tall glass before looking up at him. By ordinary standards Mazie would not be considered beautiful. To be blunt, it is doubtful that Mazie would have been considered beautiful by any standards. Her skin was sallow and her hair was a streaky blonde and her figure might remind you of an overstuffed pillow that had been tied together at the middle.

But to Howie she was suddenly The Girl.

He looked anxiously at her.

“Well?” he said weakly. “I thought you might like to.”

Mazie’s eyes traveled unenthusiastically over Howie’s lanky frame, past his out-sized adam’s apple and on to his horn-rimmed spectacles, watery blue eyes, receding forehead and thin brown hair.

Then she laughed sarcastically.

“Why should I go to a show with you?” she asked, “when I can take in a side-show by just looking at you.”

She stuck a cherry on top of the soda she was concocting and waddled off, leaving Howie staring after her, crimson-cheeked and miserable.

After a few seconds he returned to the deviled egg sandwich but his heart was not in his work. For suddenly and completely he had fallen in love with Mazie Slatter. Even her sarcastic rejoinder was only additional evidence of her wit and cleverness.

He finished the sandwich and started another mechanically.

“I can’t let myself go to pieces,” he thought grimly.

For the rest of the morning he filled orders heroically, and no one could have told from his sad, melancholy expression that the pangs of unrequited love were gnawing away at his soul.

For Howie Lemp always looked sad and melancholy.

At lunch time he got out of the store quickly and crossed to the park where he invariably drank his quart of milk and ate his two hard boiled eggs in the forty-five minutes allotted him by the proprietor of Rupp’s Drug Store.

He ate an egg in solemn silence and thought wistfully of Mazie Slatter. With each passing second it seemed his devotion and love increased. He ate his second egg and polished off a pint of milk and then dropped his head into his long bony hands.

“I guess I was born to suffer,” he muttered brokenly.

For a moment there was a complete silence in the sunny park. Then:

“Why?”

The voice, soft and caressing, sounded beside him.

Howie sighed soul fully.

“Why?” the caressing voice persisted.

Shaken from his gloomy reverie Howie took his head from his hands and looked up. A girl was seated beside him on the park bench, her dark eyes resting on him in limpid compassion.

Howie hadn’t heard the girl come up and sit down and he wondered about this for a second. Then he straightened up, self-consciously aware of her intense gaze.

“Why are you unhappy?” she asked.

Howie turned to the girl impulsively, eager to pour forth the sorry story of his great affection for Mazie and her callous disregard of him. So absorbed was he in his own plight he did not particularly notice the amazing beauty of the girl sitting beside him.

Her hair was dark with strange highlights of blue that glistened in the sun, forming a shimmering halo about her delicate, perfectly molded features. In her eyes of deep cobalt blue, sultry fires seemed to leap and dance. There was something ageless and deathless about her loveliness, as if it were too beautiful to be ravaged by even Time itself. She wore a plain white dress that was almost severe in Grecian simplicity, but which accentuated perfectly her slim, delightfully curved figure.

Howie disregarded all of these abundant charms. If he even saw them he did not indicate it by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. He plunged into his story, happy for sympathetic ears to absorb it. He talked on, adding one glowing word after another in praise of Mazie’s beauty and charm. When he could think of nothing else to add he sighed with all of the reverence of a Tibetian monk in the presence of the Inner Mysteries and lapsed into moody silence.

“Is she so beautiful?” the dark haired girl asked.

Howie sighed.

“There’s no other woman like her,” he said.

“Is she,” the dark haired girl’s voice was as soft as a summer’s breeze, “is she more beautiful than I?”

Howie turned and looked at the dark haired girl critically.

“You’re kind of pretty,” he said, “but you haven’t got the same cute wrinkles in your neck that Mazie has.”

The dark haired girl’s face remained expressionless but there was a flicker of angry astonishment behind her smouldering eyes.

“Look at me,” she whispered.

Howie looked at her. He saw her slightly parted lips, her burning blue eyes, her slender voluptuousness. She moved closer to him, one soft white hand stealing across his shoulder to caress the back of his head.

“Can’t you forget this other girl?” she whispered. “We could be happy together, you and I. Look into my eyes and tell me if it would be difficult to love me.”

Howie squirmed uncomfortably and shifted away from the girl.

“It wouldn’t be difficult for a person to fall in love with you,” he said awkwardly. “You’re really nice and pretty and everything.” He tried desperately to think of something to say that would be kind and at the same time would discourage her intentions toward him.

“You just be patient,” he added, “and some nice young man will come along. As for me though, I’m in love with the only girl for me, Mazie.”

The dark haired girl’s features were unchanged, but there was dawning consternation in the depths of her eyes.

“Do you mean,” she asked, and there was a faintly anxious tone in her smooth voice, “that you are able to ignore me for this other girl? Surely she cannot be a tenth as desirable as I. Please look at me. You must see that I am beautiful. I could make you happier than you dream possible if you will only look at me and love me.”

“I’m sorry,” Howie said with finality, “but that just isn’t possible. I’ve told you you’re pretty — after a manner. But I’m in love with Mazie and nothing can change that. We got some good looking boys over in the store jerking sodas and if you’d like, I could maybe fix things up for you with one of them. But as for me, that’s out.”

He ran a long finger around the inside of his collar and moved a few inches away from the girl. A dizzy feeling of desperation was sweeping over him. He was no Casanova and he knew it, but this girl was acting as if he were a combination of Clark Gable and William the Conqueror.

“I’ve got to be getting back to the store,” he said apologetically, “it’s been nice knowing—”

“You can’t go,” the dark haired girl cried passionately. “You mustn’t leave me. I need you. I must have you. Why don’t you take me? Everything I have, everything I am will be yours to use as you wish. Only tell me you find me desirable and you love me, and I will be yours.”

The girl’s beautiful, haunting features were strained and fearful and a nameless terror was lurking deep in her eyes.

“You mustn’t leave me,” she begged. “You must say you love me and that you will be mine. Please tell me you can’t resist me.”

“I’d like to oblige you,” Howie stammered breathlessly, “but I just can’t do it.”

He scrambled to his feet and shoved the half-empty bottle of milk into her hands.

“Here,” he said desperately, “maybe this’ll help you. It’s on me.”

He wheeled then and sprinted across the grass...

When Howie Lemp reached the drug store, he was panting strenuously. Ducking inside, he hastily wrapped a clean apron around him and took his place behind the counter with a vast sigh of relief. He had been in a few uncomfortable spots in his lifetime, but never one that equalled the predicament he had just escaped. For several blissful seconds he enjoyed the sensation of security and then one of his fellow clerks nudged him.

“Lookit!” he whispered. “Lookit the doll at the end of the counter. Baby is she a knockout. And she’s giving you the eye.”

“Where?” Howie asked.

He needn’t have asked that question. All he needed to have done was to follow the gaze of all the male employees and customers in the store. They were all staring in unconcealed admiration at an incredibly beautiful girl with blue-black hair and great flashing eyes that were now resting limpidly and adoringly on a tall, gangling soda jerker by the name of Howie Lemp.

Howie swallowed nervously as he recognized the amorous creature who had shared the park bench with him some few minutes ago. She was looking at him. But all of the fear and consternation had left her. Now she was apparently the happiest creature in the world, smiling at him with a secretive, dreamy smile that was similar in kind if not in quality to that of a love struck adolescent mooning over an autographed picture of Robert Taylor.

“What’ve you got that I ain’t,” Howie’s fellow clerk whispered enviously. “If a dame like that gave me the eye I’d drop everything and run.” Blushing to the roots of his thin hair Howie hurled himself into the job of constructing a ham-and-cheese triple-decker. Why was this girl following him? What did she want? These unanswerable questions buzzed around in his head as he worked.

“Ham on rye,” a nasal voice sang out, and looking up, Howie saw Mazie standing in front of him. “It’s a special,” she snapped, “for Old Man Potterson, so be careful.”

Howie nodded. Potterson was one of the big shots from the Colossal Studio office on the fifth floor. He was a Hollywood producer, but he spent a good deal of time traveling on the search for talent. A liberal tipper, but he was finicky about his food.

“About tonight,” Howie said desperately, as Mazie was turning away. “Haven’t you changed your mind about taking in that show with me?”

Mazie looked at him coldly, then her gaze flicked down the counter to the gorgeous brunette who was still smiling seductively at Howie.

“Why don’t you ask her?” she snapped. “She seems to be interested in oddities in the news.”

Crushed and miserable Howie listlessly went on with his work. In his benumbed condition he slapped sandwiches together automatically, too miserable to think of anything but the hopelessness of his condition. A glamorous witch who wouldn’t leave him alone and who was souring Mazie on him even more than ever. Which was quite a lot, he was forced to admit dolefully.

The store was filling up with customers, he noticed lackadaisically.

Most of them however, he noticed, were not buying anything, but merely clogging up the aisles and counters staring and oogling the bewitchingly beautiful brunette who was perched provocatively on the end stool. He risked a hasty glance at her.

Her smile widened as she caught his eye and she winked at him, coyly and intimately.

Howie dropped his eyes to the sandwich board and groaned.

Things were terrible. They couldn’t get any worse.

In that he was mistaken.

Suddenly from one of the tables in the rear of the store an enraged bellow sounded. It was like a rogue elephant trumpeting defiance in the jungle, or a maddened bull roaring at a red flag. Only it was worse because it was “Stormy” Potterson of Colossal Films.

“I won’t stand for it,” Potterson was bellowing lustily and Howie could see his huge, red-faced figure lumbering toward the front of the store.

“I’ll break whomever’s responsible for this,” he shouted. “It’s one thing I will not stand tampering with.”

He shoved his way through the bugeyed crowd at the counter and pointed a fat finger at Howie.

“Young man,” he said at the top of his voice, “did you make my sandwich? Answer me yes or no, and don’t try and pass the buck.”

Howie swallowed nervously, then squared his shoulders.

“I won’t do any buck passing,” he said, “I made it.”

“Oh did you?” Potterson almost howled. “And you admit it, brazenly and impudently.”

He suddenly lifted his arm and extended a soppy object toward Howie.

“And did you put this in it?” he exploded.

Howie’s eye’s widened in horror as he recognized the object in Potterson’s hand. It was the flat sponge he used in swabbing up the sandwich board. His eyes flashed to the receptacle where it should have been, but the receptacle was quite empty.

And the receptacle was just next to the ham plate!

He knew in one horrified second what had happened. He had stuck the sponge in Potterson’s sandwich while he was brooding over his troubles.

“Well!” Potterson shouted the word. “Did you put it in my sandwich or didn’t you?”

Howie opened his mouth, but he didn’t get a chance to speak. For the mysterious brunette stepped into the picture at that instant. She stepped alongside Potterson and tapped him on the shoulder. Her pale cheeks were touched with spots of color and her eyes flashed like twin beacons of fury.

“You can’t talk like that to him,” she said softly. “No one can in my presence. Do you understand?”

“Who says—” Potterson began to bluster, but he suddenly lost his voice as he looked at the dark-haired girl. For fully a minute he sputtered helplessly, and then he wiped his damp forehead with a trembling hand.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk,” he said weakly. “I’m Potterson of Colossal Films.” His eyes traveled over the girl’s beauty with the swiftness of the experienced showman. “I’m sure I can make you an offer that you would find acceptable.”

“I am not interested in offers,” the girl said. “Only your apology to my friend.”

“Sure,” Potterson said eagerly. “We all make mistakes.” He waved genially to Howie who was watching the scene with his mouth open a full three inches. “Forget it son. Sorry I lost my head.”

He turned back to the dark-haired girl.

“My company,” he said rapidly, “is the largest in the business. We can give you the build-up you need. I can practically guarantee you stardom inside of six months.”

The dark-haired girl smiled languorously.

“That’s what the other gentleman said. He also said his company was the largest. But he promised me stardom in three months.”

“Who’re you talking about?” Potterson snapped shrewdly.

“The gentleman from Superba Films,” the dark-haired girl said innocently. “I might add that his offer was extremely interesting.”

Potterson mopped his brow. He took another searching look at the girl, appraising her eyes, her hair, her figure. She stood before him like something from Heaven, but amused and scornful.

Potterson snapped his fingers.

“I’ll double his offer,” he barked. “Whatever it was I’ll double it.”

“It isn’t up to me to decide,” the dark-haired girl answered.

“You got an agent?” Potterson demanded.

The dark-haired girl nodded her beautiful head.

“I wouldn’t make any decision unless he told me it was acceptable to him. I trust him implicitly. He’s more than an agent to me. He’s everything!”

“Who is he?” Potterson demanded hoarsely.

“You were shouting at him a minute ago,” the dark-haired girl answered coldly. She wheeled dramatically and pointed straight at Howie Lemp.

“Talk to him,” she said softly, her eyes shining. “The decision is for him to make, for I am his, body and soul!”

A dish of deviled eggs crashed to the floor with a loud clatter. A second later it was joined by the limp body of Howie Lemp!

When Howie Lemp came around, he opened his eyes and discovered that he was resting against the luxurious cushions of a swiftly traveling limousine. Startled, he attempted to sit up, but a hand on each of his shoulders pushed him back against the cushions.

“Nothing to get excited about,” a rumbling voice said.

Howie turned and saw “Stormy” Potterson on one side of him and a sharp-featured, snappily dressed middle aged man on the other. Both of the jump seats of the big car were occupied. One very fat man and one very skinny man had their backs to him.

“W-what’s it all about?” Howie asked bewilderedly.

“You’re a sly fox,” Potterson laughed with false heartiness. “Getting a contract on that young lady in the drug store and now pretending you don’t know what we want.”

“What do you want?” Howie asked wildly.

“Don’t get excited,” Potterson said soothingly. “Our price will be the best you can get. After you fainted in the store the young lady disappeared in the crowd, but she had already told us that we had to deal through you. So that’s what we’re doing. Got your boarding house address from one of the clerks at the store and we’re heading there now to draw up the papers. Just relax. We’ll treat you right.”

“You’re all crazy,” Howie said desperately, “I haven’t any contract on anybody. Let me out of this car. I’ve got to get back to the store.”

“I gotta hand it to you,” Potterson chuckled, “you’re going to keep up the act to the end aren’t you? But we might as well put the cards on the table. You’ve got us over a barrel, I don’t mind telling you. We’ve got to get that girl before Superba does. Why she’ll be the most terrific thing that ever hit the picture business. We can’t let her get away. So all you have to do is name the price and we’ll meet it if we have t.9 mortgage my false teeth to do it.”

Howie stared about frantically. Was everybody going crazy? What had he done that deserved punishment like this? With every fibre of lanky body he longed for the orderly bustle of Rupp’s Drug Store and the exhilarating presence of Mazie Slatter.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” he managed to croak hoarsely, “I don’t even know this girl you’re raving about. I’ve only seen her twice.”

Potterson smiled insinuatingly and nudged him in the side with his elbow.

“Okay, okay,” he winked. “You’ve only seen her twice. But you managed to make a terrific impression in just that time.” The smile faded from his face and was replaced with an expression of sulky envy. “I wish I knew what you had on the ball,” he muttered.

“I wish I did, too,” Howie cried in despair.

In a few minutes the long sleek car drew to a smooth stop before the modest frame boarding house in which Howie lived. As they walked up the carpeted stairs to Howie’s third floor room, he tried again.

“You men are wasting your time,” he said pleadingly, “I can’t give you any contracts or anything. I don’t even know who or where this girl you want is.”

“You hear that,” Potterson said over his shoulder to the four men who followed him, “he doesn’t know where she is.”

The men chuckled.

“He probably can’t even get in touch with her,” Potterson added between panting breaths.

The men chuckled again.

Howie shrugged despairingly. Nothing he could say or do it seemed would convince him that he was telling the truth.

He stopped before his door, inserted the key and stepped back to allow Potterson and his four shadows to precede him into the room.

Howie followed them in, closed the door behind him and stopped short, his eyes popping open incredulously.

For reclining seductively on his bed like a contented leopard was the darkhaired nemessis who had so hopelessly scrambled up his life in the past hour. She had kicked off her high heeled pumps and now she wriggled her toes and glanced up at him through a strand of blue-black hair that had fallen over her eyes.

“Hello, honey,” she cooed.

“W — what are you doing here?” gasped Howie.

Potterson took his eyes from the brunette reluctantly.

“Let’s get down to business,” he said drawing a sheaf of papers from his inner coat pocket. “We’re prepared to go as high as necessary, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Howie collapsed into a chair. Strangling sounds came from his throat.

The dark haired enchantress slipped gracefully from the bed and crossed to Howie and settled slinkily onto his lap. Her round white arm found its way around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

“Don’t!” Howie strangled.

Potterson stared at him incredulously for a moment and then spread several impressive looking documents on a table next to the chair.

“A thousand a wqek to start,” he said crisply, “with a raise each year for the duration of this seven-year contract. Satisfactory?”

“Please,” Howie said miserably, “I’m not—”

“Okay,” Potterson said hastily, “we’ll make it two thousand to start with.”

“But—”

“Four thousand!”

“Mr. Potterson,” Howie said desperately, “this joke has gone far enough.”

“Four thousand dollars a joke?” Potterson shouted. “I’ll show you who’s joking! Ten thousand dollars!”

Howie groaned. His resistance was gone. No one would listen to him. Everybody was insane. Nothing made sense any more. The only reason and sanity left in the world belonged to Mazie Slatter. And she would have none of him. He was dimly aware that they were shoving a pen into his hand, that he was signing documents by the dozen. But he was oblivious to it all. The only thought in his mind, the only desire in his heart was Mazie.

“There,” Potterson cried triumphantly. “No one will ever break these contracts. They’re iron-clad and air-tight. It’ll cost us money, but it’s worth it to have her under exclusive contract for everything.”

“Brilliant work, Mr. Potterson,” one of his shadows commented.

“Stroke of genius, sir,” another added.

“Yes indeed,” the remaining two put in simultaneously.

Howie was caught up then in a tornado of turbulent action and excitement.

“We leave for the coast in three hours,” Potterson barked. “Be ready. We’ll work out a complete build-up campaign in the meantime. Don’t forget. Be at Union Station in three hours.”

Howie tried feebly to protest, but the situation was out of his hands and control now. Hollywood methods were in the saddle. He was dragged to his feet, hustled to the car, raced from ticket agency to haberdasher and back again, with all the furious confusion of Hollywood itself.

The whole thing had become a kaleidoscopic nightmare in which pinwheels and pyrotechnics exploded constantly. In one interval of sanity he got away long enough to phone Rupp’s Drug Store, but the clerk told him that Mazie Slatter had left the store and there was no way he could get in touch with her.

The papers had the story before they left. There were pictures of Potterson, Howie and all the yes men but not one single picture of the beautiful darkhaired girl. She was in the drawing room of the streamliner swathed to the ears in all-concealing veils. That was the build-up. She was heralded as the most glorious, glamorous, gorgeous creature ever to be signed by Colossal Films. But no pictures were to be taken until the dramatic unveiling at the depot in Hollywood. It was a dodge designed to create suspense and it was evidently succeeding. There were reams of copy about the mysterious veiled girl in the afternoon papers. And when the sleek streamliner pulled from the station hundreds of fans and curiosity seekers lined the tracks cheering and shouting.

Everyone was happy and excited and expectant but Howie. He sat glumly in his compartment feeling as if the bottom had dropped completely out of the safe, comfortable world he had known.

Just a few short hours ago he had been safe, secure and moderately happy. Now he was suddenly surrounded by a whirlpool of Hollywood maniacs and in the proximity of the glamorous, frightening dark-haired girl who acted toward him as if he were the personification of a hero from the pages of Ideal Romances.

As the wheels of the streamliner clicked swiftly over the rails bearing him inexorably toward his destiny in Hollywood, he wondered dazedly how it would all end...

Two days later as the train was approaching the sprawling, stuccoed station at Los Angeles, Howie had found no answer to his gloomy speculations. He had spent the time in transit scampering from his compartment to the diner and back, furtively dodging the efforts of the bewitching brunette to inveigle him into her drawing room.

The door of his compartment suddenly banged open and Howie started furtively. But it was Potterson’s moonlike face that appeared.

“Better be getting ready,” he barked. “We’re due in L.A. in about twenty minutes. I’ve just received word that the reception is all set to go off with a bang. We’ve got the mayor, dozens of stars and notables and half the town down at the station waiting for us. It’ll be the biggest moment in the history of publicity build-ups when we unveil Collossal’s latest star. I’m telling you the town will go wild. Now you get down to her drawing room and see that she’s ready.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’” Potterson snapped. With every foot that slid back under the wheels Potterson became more and more the infallible, dynamic Producer. He had on a brightly-checked sport coat and a crimson scarf which he wore like a uniform.

“Get moving,” he ordered.

Reluctantly Howie got moving. As he reached the door to the brunette’s drawing room he was aware that the palms of his hands were damp and cold.

Summoning all of his courage he knocked timidly. A lilting voice answered him and then the door was opened and the girl appeared.

Howie gaped. She was wearing a loose flowing white gown that blended with the creamy white of her skin and set off her dark hair stunningly. Standing before him, an inviting smile on her lips she looked like a sorceress of seduction.

“Just wanted to tell you,” Howie gulped, “we’re about there.”

The girl reached out and took Howie’s hand, drew him into the drawing room.

“Now just a minute,” he spluttered, “I’ve—”

The girl closed the door after him, leaned against it, her head tilted back to expose the long column of her throat.

“You’re always in such a hurry,” she pouted. “But we can be together for these last few minutes anyway. You don’t find it disagreeable being alone with me do you?”

Howie’s will power was meeting its Waterloo. For three days he had been as noble as Galahad, but this provocative proximity was too much for him. Mazie receded into a vague blur in his consciousness.

Hardly knowing what he was doing he took the dark-haired girl into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and completely. For a delirious instant the girl returned his embrace and it was like nothing he had ever known or dreamed in his life.

Then he got the surprise of his life!

For the girl suddenly and forcefully shoved him away, laughing gloatingly.

Howie staggered back and collapsed into a chair. He stared at her scornful features in silent, hurt amazement.

“You thought you could resist me,” she blazed angrily. “No man in three thousand years has done that. But your indifference has been grossly insulting. For that insult you will pay dearly.”

Howie stared at the girl, silent and stunned.

She seemed to be changing before his eyes. Her eyes were angry pools of smouldering flame and her features were hardening into a cold white mask of fury.

“W-who are you?” he quavered weakly.

“The Leanhaun Shee!” the word sounded like the hiss of a whip. “I live on love. My life is sustained by the devotion of men. Devotion that is as fatal to them as the sting of the adder. But I received one curse from my father that decrees that any man who resists me shall become my master. As long as you were indifferent to my charms I was your slave. Now, by your weakness and capitulation, you have become mine.”[2]

“That’s illegal,” Howie said, desperately clutching at straws. “Lincoln abolished all that sort of stuff. You’re—”

“Silence,” the girl commanded. “Rise.”

“N — no,” Howie objected weakly.

“Rise!”

Howie stood up. He didn’t want to, but some power other than his own trembling legs did the job for him.

“What do you want?” he stammered.

“Your love and your life,” the Leanhaun Shee answered softly, moving toward him. “The only man who resisted me as long as you, was Marc Antony. I didn’t mind that so much because he was occupied with Cleopatra and that was respectable competition even for me. But you, you sniveling worm, preferred that washed-out horror at the drug store to me. For that poor taste you will pay bitterly.”

“No,” Howie cried, backing from the creature.

She was growing taller before his eyes, it seemed. Her beauty was vanishing, and in its place a cold, ruthless passion was appearing. In the whiteness of her face her eyes were large saucers of violet flame.

“You are mine,” she whispered.

In desperation Howie’s distracted senses brought one name before his mind, forced one name through his terror-stiffened lips.

“Mazie!” he howled. “Mazie. Help me!”

As if this cry were the cue to invisible stage hands in invisible stage wings, the door to the drawing room was flung violently open and Mazie’s lumpy, belligerent figure marched onto the scene.

Nothing could have shocked Howie to a greater extent. His cry had been an instinctive, hopeless appeal and now, it was miraculously answered.

“Mazie,” he choked, “save me.”

Mazie surveyed the situation with a jealous glare.

“Like I thought,” she snapped. “The minute my back is turned this thing,” she paused to flick a contemptuous glance at the dark-haired enchantress, “tries to steal you right from my arms.” The Leanhaun Shee was as still and silent as if she were carved from cold white marble. Only her eyes were alive and they were like the windows of hell.

“Tell her to go,” she said tonelessly to Howie. “We are leaving.”

“Oh, no you ain’t,” Mazie cried shrilly. “If you think I’m lettin’ Howie slip away from me a second time you’re nuttier than a fruit cake.”

She wheeled to Howie.

“When I seen your pictures in the paper at home, telling about how you was to become a movie big-shot I suddenly realized that I was wrong about you. If I’d known that I would have gone to that show with you. I followed you to — to tell you that.”

Howie was a simple soul and in his tormented state this sounded logical and — wonderful.

“Gosh,” he said. “Would you, Mazie?”

“Sure, Honey,” Mazie cooed. “You’re just my type, Big Boy.”

Howie clasped her to his breast fervently. With her in his arms he felt as strong as Hercules — or Mark Antony.

“Come!” the Leanhaun Shee said softly.

Howie wavered. Mazie snuggled her peroxided head closer to him.

“We’re goin’ to be awful happy out here,” she sighed. “In pictures and everything.”

“You bet we are,” Howie said decisively. He felt as if he had emerged from a nightmare into a sane and sunny world again. He felt strong and sure of himself.

“Get out,” he said to the Leanhaun Shee. “Can’t you see we’d like to be alone?”

For a silent instant the Leanhaun Shee glared at him furiously. Then her expression softened. She shrugged her beautiful shoulders wearily.

“I must be slipping,” she said thoughtfully. “When Marc turned back to Cleo, there was some excuse for it. But,” she looked distastefully at the back of Mazie’s streaky blonde head, “in this case there’s no consolation for me at all. I might have known better than to choose a soda jerker, though.”

With a quick angry motion she whipped the white gown about her shoulder, stepped back and — vanished!

Howie blinked his eyes incredulously. There was no doubt of it. She had disappeared as completely as a whiff of white smoke in a breeze.

But he had no time to wonder about that.

For an impatient fist was pounding on the door and a loud voice was demanding.

“Hurry up in there. We’re waiting for you.”

Howie recognized Potterson’s voice with a chill start of terror.

The star, the Leanhaun Shee was gone. There was no one to take her place. His knowledge of the law was fuzzy, but he realized guiltily that he had signed contracts and legal documents guaranteeing the appearance of the glamorous brunette in pictures.

And she was gone. Vanished forever, he knew intuitively.

That was a relief, but what about the contracts he had signed? Panic mounted in his breast. He was out of one frying pan into another. As things stood, Potterson could throw him in the bastile and then throw the key away.

“Oooooh,” he groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Potterson yelled anxiously. “Anything wrong in there?”

It was then that the change came over Howie Lemp. His jaw hardened and his spine stiffened. For he suddenly though somewhat irrelevantly, remembered that he and Marc Antony had something in common. And no man with a kinship to a hero of Marc Antony’s caliber can be bluffed by a simple matter of pulling a fullgrown and fullblown movie star from his sleeve.

“There’s nothing wrong,” he snapped, and there was new authority in his voice. “I’ll — we’ll be right with you.”

The band was playing “California Here I Come” and the depot was a noisy spectacle of cheering humans and gay bunting. Officials and dignitaries were present in droves. Flood lights flashed over the spectacular scene, picking out faces of famous stars and directors.

It was Hollywood at its colorful, sensational best.

“Stormy” Potterson was on the bunting-bedecked improvised stage finishing the speech of introduction.

“...and so,” he boomed, “we feel that tonight we are welcoming to our midst one who will speedily fulfill all of the glorious expectations we have for her. In my opinion this girl of beauty and charm and talent will take her place in stardom’s uppermost niche. That is why it gives me such great pleasure to give to you, her very first audience, Colossal’s future Star of Stars!”

A spotlight stabbed at the platform revealing in its bright glare a heavily-veiled figure. Applause broke out from all sides of the depot. It swelled up, higher and higher, then at a signal from Potterson it faded away to a tense expectant murmur.

With lumbering grace Potterson escorted the heavily draped figure to the edge of the stage, and with a solemnly dramatic gesture drew aside the veil and cast it to the floor.

And in the garish light of the stabbing beacon, Hollywood had its first introduction to the sallow face and streaky hair of Mazie Slatter!

A blanket of incredulous silence settled over the crowd.

And then as Mazie shook her hands over her head like a conquering fighter the storm broke.

Roaring, rocking waves of laughter surged up from the crowd completely drowning out Potterson’s enraged bellow. It grew louder and more unrestrained by the second. Men clung to each other helplessly and some of them rolled to the floor, doubled up with merriment. It was a bedlam of buffoonery, an earthquake of mirth.

Off to one side of the howling, giggling crowd there was a lone, sad figure. Howie Lemp was not laughing.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time to substitute Mazie for the exotic Leanhaun Shee, but things were not working quite as he had hoped. In fact things were terrible. And, he decided as he saw Potterson’s huge figure lumbering toward him, they were destined to get much worse!

“I’ll throw you in jail,” Potterson was screaming. “I’ll have you tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and flung to the buzzards. No man alive can do what you’ve done to me. Made me the laughing stock of the whole industry. Where is the girl? Where is she? If you don’t produce Mazie Slatter, I’ll have you hung for kidnaping.”

“Mazie Slatter?” Howie echoed blankly. “That’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Potterson was trembling like a tub of grape jelly in his rage. He whipped out papers from his inside pocket, jabbed a thick finger at the name signed to them. “It says right there in your handwriting. Mazie Slatter!”

Howie saw that Potterson was right and he realized at the same time what had happened. When he had signed the contract he had been thinking solely of Mazie and instinctively he had written her name into the document.

“And these contracts are air tight,” Potterson bellowed over the noisy roars of the crowd.

“If you’re trying to pull something, you’re out of luck. You can’t get out of these contracts.”

Howie had been thinking swiftly and surely. His spine was stiffening again. Marc Antony was coming to the surface.

Suddenly he jabbed a bony finger into Potterson fat chest.

“You mean you can’t get out of it,” he snapped. “That girl on the platform is Mazie Slatter and you’ve signed her up for seven years. There’s nothing about physical descriptions in that contract. If you want to go to court, we will prove that Mazie Slatter has been Mazie Slatter for the past twenty-eight years and that you signed her as such.”

“It’s a trick,” Potterson howled, “a gyp. I won’t stand for it. I want the girl, the dark-haired beautiful girl I saw in the drug store. Where is she? I don’t want Mazie Slatter, if that’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”

He stared frantically over the crowd, listening to their wild hysterical laughter. He turned back to Howie shuddering.

“You hear that?” he demanded shrilly. “I’m ruined. I’ll be the biggest joke in pictures.”

“No you won’t!” Howie barked. He grabbed Potterson by both arms, jerked him around. “Listen to me. Forget about the other girl, you’ll never see her again. You’ve got something better than just a good looker.” He swung Potterson around to face the screaming, hilarious mob. “You’ve got a comedienne!” he shouted. “Look at that crowd. They love her. They’re laughing themselves sick at her, but they’re enjoying themselves like kids at a circus.”

“What about my publicity campaign?” Potterson moaned. “I’ve built this girl up as the most beautiful creature in the world. I can’t get out of that. I’m through, ruined.”

“No,” Howie said firmly, “you’re not.”

He took a deep breath. A man with will power enough to play in the same league with Marc Antony can rise to occasions.

“Let me handle things,” he said with quiet authority.

He did. With what was called a brilliant stroke of genius, he transformed Mazie Slatter into one of the greatest natural comediennes the screen has ever produced. And that was the start of Howie’s meteoric rise to the head of Colossal Films.

Now he’s happily married to Mazie. But he gets almost as much happiness from his hobby, which is collecting busts of Marc Antony. He has sixteen of them now in his office.

Double in Death

First published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.

The resident head of the New York State Insane asylum glanced from the release papers on his desk to the tall, middle-aged, intelligent looking man standing before him.

“Yours has been a most interesting case, Colegrave,” he said thoughtfully. “Six months ago I would have staked my professional reputation on the fact that you were an incurable inmate.

“Now,” the gray-haired alienist shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, “I find myself in the position of signing your release papers and offering you my congratulations on your extremely remarkable recovery.”

The tall, distinguished man facing the alienist bowed slightly, and smiled.

“Thank you doctor,” he said quietly. “You’ve done a great deal for me I know. Now that I am ready again to take my place in a normal world I find myself somewhat apprehensive. Are you quite sure that I am completely cured?”

The alienist stood up, chuckling.

“The fact that you can ask a question like that is the best indication that you are cured. I can say now, Colegrave, that when you first came into this sanitarium, you were the most advanced schizophrenic[3] I have ever observed. Your cleavage in personality and ego was almost absolute. Mentally, you were two persons. Each segment of your psyche was complete and whole as far as will, memory and temperament were concerned. As a rule when a person is a victim of schizophrenia the eventual result is terrible insanity. The two natures, the two persons you might almost say, are constantly warring for supremacy, and the outcome of such mental civil war is usually mental anarchy. By some miracle you escaped that fate.”

“I find it hard to believe,” Colegrave murmured. “I can remember what it was like when I was possessed of two distinct personalities. I can remember the terrible struggles that I underwent when my dual nature was fighting itself. Until three months ago my life was a living hell. Then, as you know, after my sickness, everything was different. I was a well man again and, somehow, my mental sickness was cured too.”

The alienist shook his head, and a puzzled line appeared over his eyes.

“It was very peculiar,” he reflected. “That sickness, with its horrible head pains of which you complained, apparently did what the best psychologists in the nation found it impossible to do. It destroyed the second party of your dual nature, leaving you free to enjoy a normal life again. Well, such is science. Infallible to a certain point, and then it goes just as crazy as the best of us do sometimes.”

Colegrave shook hands with the doctor then and walked to the door.

“Thanks again for everything,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” the alienist laughed. “You did all the work yourself.”

When Colegrave stepped through the door and walked rapidly down the gravel path that led away from the sanitarium. When he reached the iron gate, the doorman opened for him and he passed through onto a dusty, little-used road. This he followed for a mile or so, perspiring freely under the warm rays of the sun as he strode along.

At length he reached the main highway that led to the metropolitan section of New York. A car was waiting there for him and he got in.

The car moved away and Colegrave settled back against the cushions with a sigh of relief. The colored chauffeur was separated from the rear seat by a glass partition which was rolled up into place. Colegrave, however, was not alone. There was another man in the back of the car, a small, cunning looking man, who glanced sidewise at Colegrave and grinned wickedly as the car gathered speed.

“We did it, didn’t we?” he smirked. “No one has the faintest suspicion as to what happened to you. Or maybe I should say, what happened to me.”

Colegrave smiled, a thin, thoughtful smile.

“Since we are really one person, it is perfectly correct to speak of us in the singular. When I entered their crude sanitarium I was two persons mentally. Now I am two persons physically. Each of my dual natures has a physical manifestation, controlled by one intellect.”

The little man scratched his head. “If we’re the same person,” he said, frowning, “Why is it I can’t understand this situation, while you can.”

“Simple enough,” Colegrave said quietly. “Make an effort now to absorb what I am going to tell you. It may be important sometime. Ever since I was old enough to reason I realized that I possessed two distinct natures, that I was a schizophrenic. One-half of my nature was respectable on the surface, but quite coldly ambitious at the same time. This half of my nature compelled me to seek success by conventional means, which is the logical way for a man of ambition to advance in the world.

“My other nature was much more honest and direct than this respectable side of mine. It prompted me to gain wealth and recognition by any means that came to hand. This second side of mine would stop at nothing to achieve its ends. It demanded that I kill, that I steal, that I lie, that I do anything which would gain wealth and power for me.

“As a result, for the most of my life I have been engaged in a constant inner struggle. My respectable self would not object to ill-gotten gains or murder, but it did object to the possibility of exposure. My second half cared nothing for the hypercritical approval of the world. It was willing to take any and all consequences.”

Colegrave paused and glanced at the small, ruthlessly cunning man who was listening avidly to every word.

“It finally became obvious,” he went on, “that something had to be done. When I entered the state sanitarium it was hot by accident. I planned that deliberately and carefully. I realized that the only way I could achieve what I wanted from this world, would be to make the cleavage in my nature a physical one, so that my two natures could operate independently for the greater good of the single unit. This I accomplished at the sanitarium. It was simply a question of will power.

The stupid doctors imagined my headaches were organic in nature, but they were actually the result of intense, feverish concentration over a period of three months.”

“How could you create a physical manifestation of your secondary nature by will power alone?”

“It was not easy,” Colegrave replied. “Since I am Colegrave, the respected citizen, with the advantages of an excellent education, I am able to understand the process. You are my secondary nature, primitive, ruthless, and do not possess my intelligence.

“For that reason I doubt if you can understand what happened in the innermost depths of my psyche to cause the physical split in my schizophrenic condition.

“Suffice to say, I completely alienated the two halves of my natures, by blotting out all thought or awareness of my second half. This was where the will power was necessary. I concentrated, at white-hot heat for three months, on the one idea that my second nature was non-existent. Thus I eventually forced you from my conscious mind, into my subconscious. Then I administered the drug which I procured from the Viennese brain specialist before entering the sanitarium. It created a physical extension of my subconscious, which had to have another outlet since it was denied existence in my conscious mind by the power of my will.”[4]

“Well,” Colegrave’s subconscious manifestation shrugged eloquently, “if you say so, it’s okay with me. All I want to know is where do we go from here.”

Colegrave smiled again.

“That is really the important question, isn’t it? When you materialized I gave you certain instructions. Have you carried them out?”

“Yep,” the little man nodded. “I’ve got a place rented, and I’ve found the town you wanted me to look up. It’s a big place in the Middle West. The situation there is perfect.”

Colegrave lighted a cigarette and inhaled luxuriously.

“Fine. All my life I regarded schizophrenia as a curse, but now I will show the world a practical use for it. A very practical use.”

He glanced out of the window at the buildings and houses which were increasing in frequency as they neared the metropolitan area. A smile hovered over his lips. A gloating, anticipatory smile...

A week later Colegrave, immaculately attired in a conservative gray suit, approached the receptionist in an office labeled simply: Ruzzoni Enterprises.

“My name is Colegrave,” he said to the receptionist’s inquiring glance. “I should like to see Mr. Ruzzoni.”

“Do you have an appointment?” Colegrave smiled frostily.

“No. But I think he’ll see me. Tell him it’s regarding the indictment the district attorney and mayor of your delightful town are bringing against him.”

The receptionist’ scrambled to her feet and, with one puzzled glance at Colegrave’s imperturbable figure, disappeared through a heavy oak door. She returned several minutes later.

“Mr. Ruzzoni will see you,” she murmured. “Go right in.”

“Thank you,” Colegrave smiled. Then he sauntered through the oak door which had been left ajar, into a sumptuously furnished office. In the center of the room was a magnificent mahogany desk, fully eight feet long, and behind it hunched a fat, dark-skinned man with an unlighted cigar jammed into his face.

“Mr. Ruzzoni, I presume,” Colegrave said sarcastically.

“It ain’t nobody else,” the man behind the desk snapped.

His wicked black eyes glittered balefully and his hands balled into straining fists. Colegrave knew at a glance that the man was laboring under a terrific nervous tension.

“Well, whadda you want?” Ruzzoni rasped. “Are you from the D. A.’s office?”

Colegrave closed the door carefully behind him. Then he seated himself before the imposing desk, crossed his legs and lighted a cigarette.

“I am not from the district attorney’s office,” he said calmly. “I represent no one but myself. And I think I might be able to help you.”

Ruzzoni rose to his feet, his face flushing dangerously.

“What kind of a gag is this?” he demanded harshly. “If you think you—” Colegrave raised one slim hand protestingly.

“You are in trouble, are you not?” he asked quietly. “I think you are very stupid not to investigate any means which might help you.”

“I don’t believe in boy scouts,” Ruzzoni sneered. “Nobody’s goin’ to help me!”

“Maybe,” Colegrave said, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, “and maybe not. I am not a boy scout. What I can do for you will be very expensive.

And nothing is too hot for me.” Ruzzoni settled back in his chair, a puzzled frown on his swarthy features.

“I’m listening,” he said perkily. “But I ain’t talking, see? I ain’t dumb enough to fall into that kind of a trap.”

“In the first place,” Colegrave said cheerfully. “As things stand you are slated for a long trip to prison, and possibly a detour to the chair if things turn up which shouldn’t turn up.” Ruzzoni swallowed painfully and a band of beaded perspiration circled his brow.

“The district attorney and the mayor,” Colegrave went on, “are after you, Ruzzoni, and they’ve got the goods on you. You’ve been running the organized graft and gambling in this town for eight years, and they figure that’s about long enough. If they get an indictment against you, you’re heading for the chair. When one witness spills his story, it’ll start them all talking.

“The only possible out for you is to eliminate the mayor and the district attorney in such a way that no suspicion falls on you. Then, in the chaos that will result, you can move some men you control on the judicial benches into the offices of the mayor and district attorney. It will be a simple matter then to squash the indictment. Don’t you agree that it’s a sensible plan?”

“It’s lovely,” Ruzzoni snapped bitterly. “But who’s goin’ to commit suicide by trying to rub out the mayor and D.A.? Even if he did get ’em, he wouldn’t have a chance to get away. I’ve offered my own boys as high as fifty grand, but they won’t touch it. The bunch of yellow rats!”

“I’ll handle that end of things,” Colegrave said softly. “But it’s going to cost you exactly one million dollars.”

“You’re crazy,” Ruzzoni cried. “There ain’t that much money in this whole town!”

Colegrave stood up.

“I’m not here to haggle,” he said coldly. “A million — in cash. I’ll collect after I do the job.”

“After you do the job?” Ruzzoni said craftily. “Well that’s a little different. I think we can make a deal.”

“Don’t bank on my not being here to collect it,” Colegrave said mirthlessly. “I have a habit of keeping dates. I’ll meet you here the day after his honor and the district attorney keep their date with the gentleman with the scythe. Is that agreeable with you?”

Ruzzoni licked his lips.

“Yeah, it’s okay by me.”

“Fine,” Colegrave said smoothly. “I’ve drawn up something in the nature of a contract for you to sign. Just a little precaution in case you forget our little deal after I do the job. I wouldn’t like you to be troubled with amnesia when I come around to collect. An incriminating paper in my possession would prevent anything like that.”

“I ain’t signing nothin’,” Ruzzoni snarled. “How do I know you’re on the level?”

“You don’t,” Colegrave said quietly. “It’s a chance you’re going to take. Of course, if you prefer not to take that chance—”

He shrugged his shoulders and started for the door.

“Wait!” Ruzzoni cried. “I–I’ll string along.”

Colegrave smiled and pulled a paper from his breast pocket.

“Just sign this, please...”

Three days later Theodore Colegrave paused before the imposing edifice of the city hall, glanced casually up and down the street, before turning to the small, grim looking man who was with him.

“Quite sure of things, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

The little man — the physical manifestation of Colegrave’s duality — nodded.

“The mayor and the district attorney are together now examining witnessess for the Ruzzoni hearing. I get into the office with my fake message and plug ’em both. Then I either get shot or captured on the spot. Right?”

“Right,” Colegrave said. “And be sure and not miss. There’s a million dollars hanging on the accuracy of your shots.”

“I won’t miss,” Colegrave’s secondary nature promised. “This is the kind of thing I enjoy doing.”

“Then get going, Colegrave. And good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Colegrave turned and, without a backward glance, strolled off down the street. A block from the city hall he increased his pace until he had covered a half mile. Then he turned into a restaurant and ordered a glass of wine.

“And bring me the next edition of the afternoon paper,” he told the waiter who took his order.

As he sipped his wine he went over his scheme step by step and could find no flaws. It was a masterful plan, he was forced to admit. His secondary self would commit the assassination and receive the penalty. Thus he, Colegrave, would be rid of his schizophrenic double, and, at the same time, he would be earning a million cool dollars from the vice lord, Ruzzoni. And that would be only the start. With a million dollars in his power, and forever rid of his dual nature, there were no heights to which he might not aspire.

He had no compunction about the fact that his subconscious double would be eliminated forever. Just as his secondary nature had no qualms about sacrificing his physical life.

It was the really choice part of his plan. The two natures acting independently to advance the single unit. No possible suspicion could ever fall on him for his part in the crime; The double murder would be attributed to a crazed madman, and after the assassin was killed, the affair would be forgotten.

Colegrave drank his wine with relish and ordered another glass. He was a brilliant man, there was no doubt of that.

Forty five minutes later, the waiter came rushing to his table with a copy of a paper on which the ink was still damp.

“Will yuh look at that?” he cried, spreading the paper on Colegrave’s table. The headline read:

MAYOR AND D.A. KILLED BY ASSASSIN’S BULLETS.

KILLER CAPTURED WITHOUT STRUGGLE

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Colegrave murmured.

Then he finished his drink, picked up his change and sauntered out of the restaurant.

The next morning Ruzzoni paid off.

If there was any thought of a double-cross in his mind, it was dispelled when Colegrave informed him that the incriminating contract was locked in a safety deposit vault, with instructions to disclose the contents if he should meet with any violent accident.

“I’m paying off,” he said grinning. “It’s worth it to me, in the first place, and I can’t get out of it in the second place. With the mayor and the D.A. out of the way, that indictment is a thing of the past. I’m in the clear and in the saddle from now on in.”

“One thing you can do for me,” Colegrave said as he was leaving. “Arrange it for me to see this fellow that did the job for me.”

“I’ve been wondering about him,” Ruzzoni said softly, “What’s to prevent him from singing? He must’ve been an awful chump to take the chance he did, but still he might be bright enough to start popping off what he knows.”

“That’s just it,” Colegrave smiled. “He doesn’t know anything at all. Even if he did I doubt if he’d talk.”

“It’s your neck if he does,” Ruzzoni said. “I’ll arrange for you to see him. They’ll rush through his trial, but I’ll get you an interview with him the day of the frying party. It shouldn’t be more than a few weeks off.”

One month later Colegrave was admitted into a barred, heavily-guarded room, in which a small, surly looking man sat hunched on a stool. The head of the man was shaved and his trouser legs were split. When he saw Colegrave his ugly yellow teeth showed in a grin.

“Everything’s jake, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Be careful of what you say,” Colegrave murmured. “Yes, everything’s jake. The last act takes place tonight when the part of me that is you dies. It is strange that I must die to live, but that is the fact.”

Little more was said. When Colegrave left some minutes later, he felt he was leaving a part of himself. But this thought only elated him. It was part of himself that he could well do without, now that its usefulness was over. It was like a man with a withered arm having it amputated. With the death of his subconscious manifestation, he would be free forever to live his own life, with the position and power that his money would assure him.

At twelve o’clock that night Colegrave was seated in a smart night club, formally attired in evening clothes, a magnum of the finest quality champagne set before him.

Sweet strains of music floated through the smoke-laden air, and the dulcet laughter of pretty girls caressed his ears.

This was the life that would be his to enjoy completely in just exactly — he glanced at his watch — two more minutes.

The execution was scheduled for 12:03.

He poured himself a drink of the sparkling wine and lighted a cigarette. In a minute and a half he would be released forever from all worries. He watched the second hand of his wrist watch complete one circle and start on the next. Just a matter of seconds now...

As the second hand started on the last quarter of the minute, Colegrave rose to his feet, glass in hand. It was only fitting that he drink a toast to the exit of his secondary nature.

He was raising his glass as the second hand swept past 12:03.

“A toast to one who—”

They were his last words.

A bolt of white-hot pain seemed to crash into his brain, even as the words echoed in his ears.[5] The glass in his hand splintered as his hand closed spasmodically, and the wine splashed over his shirt front.

Then he crashed to the floor.

A woman screamed, and the music jerked to a ragged stop. A crowd clustered about Colegrave’s lifeless figure, until the manager arrived and had the body carried to his office.

Then the police were called.

The coroner called it a heart attack, although he said it should more accurately be called a mind attack. The tissues of the brain were seared and shattered into shapeless shreds.

From the standpoint of the police there was one very fortunate angle to the mysterious death. For, when a certain safety deposit box corporation learned of it, they handed to the guardians of the law a document which convicted beyond all doubt a certain Mr. Ruzzoni as being behind the double killing of the mayor and the district attorney.

Ruzzoni, however, saved the state a job by committing suicide while the police were smashing in the door of his apartment.

Bertie and the Black Arts

First published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.

When the Moss wood college football special rattled to a stop in the sleepy little depot on the outskirts of Mosswood, it disgorged some three hundred pennant-waving, red-faced, drunkenly vociferous alumni. These blithe spirits swarmed over the waiting room, shouting to friends, yelling at cab drivers and in general behaving with the careless abandon that is the stamp of men released from the sober vigilance of their wives.

Among this carnival of happy souls Bertie Crimmins stood out like a beacon on a dark night. Or like a professional pallbearer in the midst of a New Year’s Eve celebration.

He was a tall, slim young man and, except for the pleasantly vacant look on his face he might have been considered handsome. He stood out in the crowd because he was wearing his hat instead of waving it wildly over his head. Also he was sober. On top of all this he carried no pennants and was not pounding someone on the back and shouting at the top of his voice.

There was, however, a certain wistful light in his eyes, as he surveyed the antics of his companions. Once, as the chorus of the Mosswood school song was being chanted by an inebriated and off-key quartet, his lips began to move automatically and the song almost poured forth of its own volition.

As he stood in the center of the depot looking about expectantly, a chubby, red-faced chap holding a bottle in one hand stumbled into him.

“Ssssorry,” he mumbled, swaying slightly. Then his eyes lighted with recognition. “My old pal, Bertie Crimmins!” he cried emotionally. “I didn’t know you were coming down for the ol’ game. Have a drink, pal, have a drink.”

He shoved the bottle toward Bertie.

Bertie looked at it longingly, but shook his head.

“I’m not using the stuff,” he said weakly.

His cock-eyed friend stared at him with incredulous disbelief.

“You don’t say,” he mumbled in astonishment. “You were the best ol’ rum pot in school when I was here. Member the time ol’ Prexy caught the two of us, blind drunk, in the girl’s dressing room at the Senior Prom? That was some time, wasn’t it?”

“Y — yes it was,” Bertie said hastily. He wiped his suddenly damp brow, and glanced nervously about the depot.

“You know sumpn’,” his drunken chum tittered, “I always wondered what ol’ Prexy was doing there, himself.”

In spite of conscience, Bertie found himself warming to the subject.

“Was odd, wasn’t it?” he said. “Do you suppose the old bounder—”

“Hello, Bertrand,” a soft voice beside him said.

Bertie froze in mid-sentence. At his side was a slim, lovely blonde girl with deep blue eyes. There was just a touch of frost in those lovely eyes now.

“Darling,” Bertie cried nervously. “You’re looking wonderful. Positively radiant. Let’s go outside. Out in the clean, fresh air. Away from these — er — gross people.”

He turned to the chubby drunk and said firmly,

“There are no more trains arriving today, my good man. That’s all you wanted to know, is it not?”

Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the lovely blonde girl by the arm and towed her out of the depot into the fresh air.

There he breathed deeply, not for health’s sake, but from sheer relief.

Ann Turner, the lovely blonde girl, regarded him dubiously.

“Bertie, dear,” she said, “you haven’t broken any of your promises have you?”

“Silly girl,” Bertie laughed. “I have been the epitome of respectability these last two months.”

“No drinking?”

“Not a drop.”

“Poker?”

“Certainly not.”

“Horses?”

“My dear little cherub, I haven’t even nodded to a milkman’s horse. That should prove that I can be the steady, reliable type, what?”

Bertie Crimmins’ problem was not a new one. In college he had been a happy, care-free soul and the stigma of his undergraduate days had a nasty way of sticking to him. When he had met The Girl, it turned out that she had heard of his primrosy path and, as a result, was dubious about the double harness idea he had suggested one moonlight night. So he had been put on probation and, to his credit, he had survived the ordeal manfully.

“You do look different,” Ann said thoughtfully. “You have a very respectable look in your eyes.”

Inwardly, Bertie sighed. He had slipped far if his stare at a luscious girl could be described as respectable. But he said:

“Right you are. Babbit Bertie, they call me. Now will you marry me?”

“What will we live on?” Ann asked practically.

Bertie almost swooned with delight at this time-honored question. For it meant that The Girl was practically in his arms for keeps.

“A sensible question,” he said approvingly. “But you may cease worrying on that score. My brother, who is a good enough chap in his way, controls the purse strings of the Crimmins estates. The foolish chap cares nothing for money himself, but he has refused to pass along any of the bonny green stuff to me. You see he hasn’t much confidence in me. But when he sees the remarkable transformation I have undergone, he will give me his blessings and large chunks of lettuce with which we can furnish our nest.”

“Where is your brother?”

“Right here at Mosswood. He’s assistant professor of almost forgotten languages, or something like that. Odd, what?”

“Will you see him today?”

“First thing,” Bertie answered cheerfully. “I’ll drop you home and then speed the body over to his rooms to show him what a sterling chap I’ve turned into.”

He waved for a cab.

A half hour later Bertie stepped from the cab, a feeling of virtuous confidence in his heart. He had dropped Ann off a few minutes before and her farewell had been affectionately tender. It was obvious that she was impressed by the New Bertie.

Bertie paid off the driver with his last remaining change and headed up the elm-lined walk that led to the unpretentiously dignified house where his brother lived and labored.

There was a song in his heart and a bounce in his stride as he trotted up the steps and punched the doorbell. His brother’s housekeeper opened the door and after murmuring “speak of the devil” or something equally cheery, admitted him.

She led the way to his brother’s study in a grim silence. She did not approve of Bertie Crimmins interrupting his brother in the middle of his work. She paused before an oak-paneled door.

“Mister Arthur is very busy these days,” she said coldly. “I hope you will not disturb him too much.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Bertie said warmly. “I’ll only be here for the weekend.”

“Only? Couldn’t you manage to stay a full week?”

Sarcasm was lost on Bertie.

“Nice of you,” he said brightly, “but it just can’t be done. Sorry and all that.”

With a warm feeling of being in demand, he opened the oak-paneled door and strode into his brother’s study.

“What ho!” he cried.

His brother, a lean scholarly looking chap, with graying temples and hornrimmed glasses, looked up from his desk where he had been intently examining a faded piece of parchment.

There was a distinct trace of annoyance in his tired blue eyes.

“Must you bellow?” he said impatiently.

“Sorry,” Bertie said. “Didn’t realize the old vocal chords had that much vim and vigor. Must be the old brotherly affection cropping out.”

“Stop babbling,” his brother said. “Come in and close the door. I’m busy here. Be through in a moment. Sit down.”

“Right ho!” Bertie said. “Don’t let me disturb the great brain. Let it ramble on. I’ll sit and watch.”

“In silence,” his brother qualified.

Bertie found a comfortable chair and threw his lean body over it in a position that a professional contortionist might have envied. His brother had turned back to his desk, his head bent close to the ancient parchment. He only changed his position to turn the pages of a huge leather bound book resting on the desk beside him.

Bertie gazed about at the book lined walls and sighed. It didn’t hardly seem decent to give a million dollars to a buzzard who spent his waking hours digging into the remains of obscure authors.

He was disturbed by an exultant exclamation from his brother.

“Got a nibble?” he asked companionably.

His brother’s thin frame was trembling with excitement.

“If,” he muttered tensely, “I can prove a relationship between the recurrence of this symbol and the recurrence of the letter V in the Phoenician alphabet, I may have something.”

“Probably alphabet soup,” Bertie said brightly. “Get it! Letter ‘e’ mixed up with something else and you get alphabet soup. It’s a joke, what?”

His brother turned to him, the scientific zeal in his eyes fading slowly.

“Bertie,” he said slowly, “you are a blithering moron. On top of that—”

“Tut! Tut!” Bertie said hastily. “Mustn’t forget the old brotherly affection.”

“You make it easy to,” his brother said sadly.

“It’s nice of you to say so,” Bertie beamed. “Now I’ve a surprise for you. I’m getting married. Congratulate me.”

“Married?” his brother said sharply.

“Right ho! It’s a blow, but you must be strong. You’re not losing a brother, you know, you’re gaining a sister.”

His brother lighted a pipe carefully and peered over the flame at Bertie as one might at an amiable nitwit.

“What are you going to live on?” he asked.

“Glad you brought that up, old bean,” Bertie said. “We’ll be needing a spot of assistance and I thought that you might bless the union with a hearty hunk of the old necessary.”

“Translated, that means I am to finance your marriage?”

“Crudely put, but accurate,” Bertie admitted.

“I shall do no such thing. In my opinion you are about as competent to handle money as a two-months-old baby. The bulk of the family estate will revert to you when I think you are capable of handling it intelligently. That date, I regret to say, does not seem imminent.”

“You mean,” Bertie said glumly, “that it’s no soap.”

“I mean precisely that.”

“But I’m a new man,” Bertie said frantically. “Old salt of the earth, backbone of the Nation. No more of the cup that cheers, no more of the gay race tracks. All over, all done with.”

His brother looked at him skeptically.

“In the vernacular, I am from the state of Missouri. If you are actually the paragon of masculine virtue that you claim, I might reconsider.”

“A chance is all I ask,” Bertie said dramatically. “Tell me,” he said in a more conventional tone, “does the family estate mount up to a tidy bit?”

“Very tidy,” his brother answered. “Several millions at least.”

Bertie had no conception of amounts over ten, but he knew a million to be a hefty lot of money. He wondered if it would be enough to pay off his debts and set him and Ann up in a cozy fiat?

His brother disrupted his thoughts by rising to his feet and picking up the parchment from the desk with a gesture of disgust.

“Money is the most helpless thing in the world,” he said scathingly. “It is nothing in itself. Men’s cupidity lends it value. The real and lasting things of this world are the things that can be locked away in the vaults of the mind. I would trade all the riches of the world for the translation of this parchment I hold in my hand.”

Bertie looked at the parchment with new respect.

“What is it?” he asked. “A new system on the ponies?”

His brother sighed and placed the parchment carefully in the drawer of the desk. There was a despairing gleam in his eye.

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “I am going out. In the park the birds are chattering and the loons are on the lake, so I will be thinking of you, Bertrand.”

After his brother left, Bertie prowled about the library, glancing vaguely at the grimly titled books on the shelves, and musing darkly on his own troubles.

Things did look pretty blackish, he decided with a sigh. It was apparent that his brother’s opinion concerning him had not undergone any changes for the better in the past months. And if his brother didn’t change his mind, Lohengrin was a long way off.

Saddened, Bertie slumped into the chair before his brother’s desk. But Bertie’s mind, such as it was, was incapable of dwelling for more than two consecutive minutes on any problem. Even his own feeling of frustration and disappointment faded away, leaving him again his vacantly cheerful self.

Whistling, he picked up the massive, black leather bound book from his brother’s desk. In the back of his mind was the vague idea that since his brother practically burned incense before these crypts of entombed learning, it would do him no harm to dip into their musty depths and see what was what.

The first yellowed page of the book bore, in archaic lettering, the ominous inscription:

BLACK ARTS OF THE NETHER COSMOS.

Interested, Bertie turned another page. There, he learned after glancing down a few paragraphs, the proper technique for summoning forth the demons from the sixth pit of the fourth lower world.

“Well, well,” muttered Bertie. “It’s darned simple at that. If anybody wanted a demon it shouldn’t be hard to arrange things.”

Thoroughly entranced, he browsed on, until he came to a tattered page which was headed in solid black letters,

FORMULA FOR MYSTIC CLARIFICATION

There he paused. As nearly as he could figure it out one had simply to mutter a bit of mumbo-jumbo and — presto! Everything became as clear as crystal. He thought wistfully of the excellent use he could have put this device in his college days.

It was typical of Bertie that a book of mysterious incantations, designed to call up demons and impart superhuman knowledge, would cause him no surprise. He had a naive confidence in the printed word; to the extent that anything on paper was automatically true.

As he was about to turn the page a wonderful thought popped into his head. It was so beautifully simple that it took his breath away.

Quickly he re-read the directions on the Mystic Clarification page. They weren’t difficult. In fact it only took him a few minutes to repeat aloud the incantation that was part of the ritual. He waited a moment then, expecting something in the way of a blazing ball to explode in his head, but nothing happened.

Undaunted he pulled open the drawer of his brother’s desk and removed the heavy parchment which his brother had been vainly attempting to translate.

After a quick glance over the symbols inscribed on its ancient surface he chuckled heartily.

“It works,” he cried gleefully.

Picking up a pencil from the desk he scribbled down the translation on the back of a piece of scratch paper. This would certainly set him in solid with his brother. It was wonderfully simple. Why, it was just as easy as reading something written in English.

This idea had hardly grazed his mind, when a dampening thought occurred to him. Glancing at the writing on the parchment paper again was enough to clinch his suspicions. The thing was written in English. Even Bertie possessed sufficient intelligence to realize that it was this that made the translation so simple.

The pencil slipped from his disappointed fingers. He obviously had the wrong parchment. A hurried search of the desk drawer and the shelves over the desk disclosed no other untranslatable parchments, so he assumed, with one of his unusual flashes of brilliance, that his brother must have put the document somewhere else.

“Oh well,” he sighed, “his loss after all.”

With a shrug he turned back to the fascinating book. For the rest of the afternoon he amused himself by reciting aloud a number of the euphonious incantations, all of which applied to various types of goblins, witches and demons. He had reached voodooism when the sport began to pall on him. After all even the creatures of the Nether Cosmos grow tiresome if taken in too large doses.

With a yawn he tossed the heavy book back to the desk and sauntered from the library. The house was dark. No cheery bustling from the region of the kitchen indicated that toothsome meals were being prepared for him, so, with a martyred sigh, he ascended the stairs to the guest bed room.

He wasn’t really hungry, for he had eaten on the train, so he decided to hit the hay and thus convince his brother that he was really the soul of virtuous respectability. Ordinarily the eve of the traditional game between State and Mosswood college would find Bertie carousing about the bright spots of the town, wassailing with boon and beery companions until the wee sma’. When his brother returned and found him tucked peacefully away in bed and sleeping the sleep of the innocent and the just, perhaps it would soften his heart a bit.

So with these cheerful speculations buzzing about in his head Bertie turned off the dark hallway and groped his way into the bed room he intended to occupy.

Possibly it was because of this preoccupation that he did not notice the acrid odor of sulphurous smoke which was drifting through the room. That is, he didn’t notice it right away.

It wasn’t until he was in the middle of the room that he paused and sniffed the air.

“What ho!” he said, startled. “Something burning I’ll bet.”

Bertie was generally not so swift with his deductions. Now, possibly as a result of his studious afternoon, he was unusually sharp.

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” he reasoned shrewdly.

He was just moving to the window to let in a little fresh air when he noticed a peculiar thing.

Circling him on all sides and silhouetted against the blackness of the room were several dozen pairs of gleaming white eyes.

Bertie glanced carefully about to be sure he was not imagining things. His scrutiny convinced him that he was not imagining anything at all. The eyes were there, round and white, and they all seemed to be staring directly at him.

Now the average young man stumbling into a room full of staring white eyes would probably do his thinking with his legs and dash from the room at top speed.

This would have been the sensible thing to do, which is probably why Bertie did nothing of the sort.

He peered at the circle of eyes with interest.

As his eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room he made out several dark shapes perched about. They appeared only as vague outlines and their shadowy forms were unlike anything Bertie had ever seen. Of their faces he could see nothing. Only the white staring eyes and the lumpy black shapes were visible. There must have been at least eight or ten of them, perched on the furniture of the room. “Well, well,” Bertie muttered.

He was not frightened, but he had the strange feeling that he should have been. The situation was rapidly developing into an impasse. After all he couldn’t just stand there and stare at these strange things which had chosen his bedroom as a roosting place.

He cleared his throat, while he tried to think of something that would more or less break the ice.

“Well, well,” he said finally. “Warm for May, isn’t it?”

There was a sound like the rustle of dead leaves as one of the vague, formless shapes seemed to stir slightly. A soft, strangely toneless voice said, “We have come to do your bidding, Oh Master. From the haunts of the nether cosmos we have traveled. By the unseen powers that bind us, what Is your wish?”

Bertie listened to the sepulchral voice with mingled emotions. He was touched by the fact that these things — whatever they were — seemed to be anxious to help him. That, however, did not alter the fact that there was something deuced peculiar about the whole matter.

“Well,” he said uncertainly, “it’s nice of you to — to stop in like this. But just who are you, anyway?”

“I am Xanthos,” the toneless voice replied softly.

Peering about Bertie couldn’t tell which of the shadowy beings was speaking. Not that it made a great deal of difference.

“I’m Crimmins, Bertie Crimmins,” Bertie said companionably, “Class of ’39. Are you boys here for the game tomorrow?”

“We are here,” the toneless voice replied, “to do your bidding.”

“Very nice of you,” Bertie said warmly, “but I don’t need anything just now. If I do I’ll be glad to throw the business your way.”

There was no answer from the darkness. Peering about Bertie saw that the circle of eyes had disappeared and that the formless dark shapes had likewise vanished. He also noticed that the annoying odor of brimstone and sulphur had faded away.

“Well, well,” he said. “Neat trick, what?”

He stepped over and flicked on the light switch. Everything in the room seemed quite normal. It was unoccupied and the covers of the bed were turned down invitingly.

So Bertie undressed and went to bed.

He was just dozing off when a hazy fragment of thought brushed his mind, driving sleep away. Where had those strange dark creatures come from? Who and what were they?

These were the thoughts that buzzed about in his head like gadflies. They obviously weren’t college students or star boarders. The more he toyed with the problem the more interesting it became.

He tossed from one side to the other, tangling the covers about his neck. It must have been fully five minutes before the light dawned on Bertie.

When it did he almost chuckled out loud in relief.

The things — the vague black shapes — were obviously creatures such as described in the ancient leather bound book he had found on his brother’s desk. That was the first step of his reasoning. The second was simplicity itself. In his reading from the leather-bound book he had apparently called these creatures to his side. One of the mysterious incantations must have done the trick.

“Kind of a nasty stunt to pull on them,” he said thoughtfully. “But,” he decided philosophically, “it can’t be helped now. Whatever they are — demons, ghosts or ghouls — they’re here and they’ll just have to make the best of it.”

With a relieved sigh he snuggled down into the covers. Now he could sleep. With his little mystery logically explained he could close his eyes peacefully. He even felt somewhat superior about the matter. It wasn’t everyone who could whistle up a roomful of demons. No sir!

He slept like a babe.

The next morning he awoke, cheerful and refreshed and after a brisk shower trotted downstairs whistling enthusiastically.

His brother’s housekeeper met him at the foot of the stairs.

“Morning,” Bertie said brightly. “What’s sizzling for breakfast?”

“Breakfast was over two hours ago,” the housekeeper answered. It was apparent that this fact gave her a good deal of satisfaction.

“Oh,” Bertie said, his spirit wilting at the prospect of a breakfastless morning. “Well, is the big brain up yet?”

“If you are referring to your brother, he left some time ago. I believe he intended to meet the president of the college on a very important matter.”

“Oh,” Bertie said again.

Looking at his brother’s housekeeper’s grim jaw he decided that the prospects of wangling a spot of breakfast from her were extremely slim.

So, he decided to take his famished frame off to the local hotel, where he could also arrange for tickets for the day’s game between Mosswood and State and phone Ann.

With a stiff bow to the housekeeper he wrapped his injured dignity about him like a cloak and left the house.

The hotel lobby was a swarming mass of pennant-waving alumni and sharp looking bookmakers who were taking and giving bets on the game.

Bertie made for the hotel dining room and he was halfway through a plate of bacon and eggs when a disquieting thought struck him.

He signaled a waiter.

“I say,” he said, “I just remembered that I haven’t got tickets for today’s game yet. Can’t imagine how it slipped my mind. Will you pick me up a couple and bring them here like a fine fellow.” The waiter looked at him in slight astonishment.

“You can’t be serious, sir. Surely you must know that this game has been sold out for weeks. Why yesterday the scalpers were getting sixty dollars a pair for tickets. But now there are none available at any price.”

“Hmmmmm,” Bertie said thoughtfully. This was a pretty kettle of fish. Ann had her heart set on seeing the game. So, as a matter of fact, had Bertie. It would be more than tragic to miss it.

“Nothing you can do at all?” he asked the waiter.

“Not a thing, sir.”

“Very good. Thank you.”

“Yes sir.” The waiter moved away, leaving Bertie to his solitary gloom.

He speared a piece of bacon with unwonted savagery.

“I wish I had a ticket,” he muttered. “No, I wish I had two. There’s Ann to think of. I wish I had a hundred, a thousand of them.”

There was a faint rustle beside him. It was a sound like dry leaves scraping over hard, cold earth. Bertie hardly noticed it. He was so engrossed in his own misery that he didn’t hear the soft, toneless voice whisper,

“As you wish, Master!”

He went on eating, wondering what he could possibly use as an explanation to Ann. At last he was forced to the realization that nothing he could tell her would help things. She would consider this just another cotton-headed lapse on his part.

He was walking away from the table when the waiter’s voice called after him.

“Just a moment, sir. You’re forgetting your package.”

Bertie turned and saw that the waiter was lifting a small package from the table he had just left. The package was wrapped in brown paper and was about eight inches square.

“Is that mine?” he asked blankly.

“It must be,” the waiter said. “I know it wasn’t here when you arrived. I had just cleared the table and I remember distinctly.”

Bertie took the package in his hand. It wasn’t very heavy. He tried to remember whether or not he had had a package with him when he entered the hotel. The effort was a failure. He couldn’t. It might be his at that.”

“Thanks,” he said, “silly of me to forget it.”

He sauntered toward the lobby carelessly removing the outside wrappings from the package. After all if it belonged to him he had a right to know what it was, didn’t he?

As he reached the entrance of the lobby he had finished ripping the paper from the object. Only then did he glance down to see what it was he had been carrying about with him.

His knees almost failed him at the sight.

For the package contained three neat stacks of tickets to the game between Mosswood and State. There must have been at least a thousand tickets and all of them were for locations from the forty to the forty yard line.

He was still standing, staring dumbly at the stacks of ducats when a heavy set, florid faced man bumped into him.

“Watch where you’re going,” the man growled. He started to pass on, but then his eye dropped to the bundle of tickets Bertie was holding in his hands. His eyes lighted excitedly.

“Are those for today’s game?” he demanded tensely.

“Why, yes,” Bertie said. “I guess they are.”

“For sale?” the man snapped.

The idea hadn’t occurred to Bertie, but now he examined it and found it an excellent one.

“All but two,” he answered.

The florid-faced man pulled out a well-padded wallet.

“I’ll give you fifty for a pair,” he said. “Okay?”

“That seems a fair price,” Bertie said thoughtfully.

The man paid him, and Bertie gave him two tickets on the fifty yard line.

“Tell your friends,” Bertie said genially. “Plenty left.”

He pocketed the money with a pleased smile and strolled on. This was excellent. Very fine, indeed.

Before he reached the center of the lobby he was receiving quite a bit of attention. Men stared unbelievingly at the thick stacks of tickets in his hands, then edged closer to him.

In no time at all Bertie made two more sales and now he had one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket.

As the word flashed about the lobby that tickets were being sold, something in the nature of a mild stampede resulted.

“Don’t crowd, don’t crowd,” Bertie said affably. “There’s plenty here for everybody.”

To facilitate things he climbed onto a table in the center of the lobby. There he was able to pass out the tickets to the crowd below him with little difficulty. From their extended hands he plucked the green bills and the feeling of happiness within him grew deeper with each additional purchase.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “It’s really dirt cheap, you know. It’s practically a steal. Thank you, and you too. Who else? There you are. Fifty dollars to see Mosswood beat State is practically a robbery.”

Bertie became aware of a sharp featured, nattily dressed chap standing directly in front of the table, glancing up at him with unwinking gray eyes.

“Yes sir,” he said genially, “how many?”

“I got tickets,” the sharp featured little man answered, “I just heard you say Mosswood’s goin’ to beat State. Would you care to back that up With a little cash?”

“My dear fellow,” Bertie said in a kind voice, “do you actually mean to tell me that you have money to throw away? State does not have a chance, that’s all there is to it. Save your lettuce, my good chap. Invest it in annuities or life insurance, but don’t bet on State.”

The nattily dressed fellow pulled a roll of bills from his pocket.

“I’m not worrying. If you’re on Mosswood, put up or shut up.”

Bertie’s pride was touched to the quick.

“Sir,” he said, “name the amount and make it light on yourself.”

It took only a few moments to arrange the bet. The money was held by the hotel desk clerk. Bertie bet every cent he had made on the tickets and felt stoutly virtuous about it. After all, it wasn’t really gambling. It was just a quick pleasant manner of doubling his stakes.

The bet made, the sharp-featured little gambler smirked unpleasantly at him and swaggered away.

“Who is he?” Bertie asked the clerk “Him? Oh he’s one of the bookmakers who comes down to this game every year. They call him Sure Thing Lindsay.”

“Hmmmm,” Bertie said.

“That’s because he never bets on anything but a sure thing.”

“Hmmmm,” Bertie said again. “Sure Thing Lindsay, eh?”

It was while he was musing upon the unpleasant things that Mr. Lindsay’s nickname suggested that he felt a firm tap on his shoulder.

Turning, he was confronted by two solidly built gentlemen, dressed in gray overcoats and gray fedoras and wearing large black shoes.

“You the guy who’s scalping the tickets?” one of them asked.

Bertie’s spirits rose. Here was fresh fish.

“I’m the one, boys,” he said cheerfully. “Better get ’em now before the price goes up. How many?”

“Probably one to ten,” one of the gray overcoated men said grimly. He pulled a badge from his pocket and shoved it under Bertie’s nose. “We’ve been warning you scalpers all week and now I think we’re goin’ to make an example out of you. We didn’t think we’d find any of you dumb enough to scalp tickets right in the lobby of the leading hotel.”

“Now just a minute, gentlemen,” Bertie said feebly. “This is all some terrible mistake.”

“You said it. And you’re the one that made it. Come on.”

Bertie heard a metallic click and felt cold steel on his wrists. Handcuffed, and with a burly plainclothes man on either side of him, he was led across the lobby, protesting weakly and vainly-

Things looked very black. Gloomy thoughts bobbed through his head. What kind of a country was this turning into, anyway? A man tried to pick up an honest penny and he found himself bundled off to the bastille for possessing a little initiative.

He would certainly miss the game now. And so would Ann. Worse, he couldn’t get in touch with her and tell her he was in jail. That definitely would not be wise.

It was a terrible mess. He didn’t see how things could possibly be worse.

In this dark mood he was hustled across the lobby to the revolving doors that led to the street. There, to his intense humiliation, he was forced to stand like a culprit in the dock, while a steady flow of morbidly curious people surged past him.

Feeling as hounded and persecuted as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, he nevertheless affected a blandly nonchalant pose. He even hummed a popular ditty and kept time with his feet. He’d show ’em. Let them try and break his spirit. So absorbed was he in this role that he didn’t notice the last two people to enter the revolving door.

He had no idea that disaster was practically nipping at his heels until a smooth, icily cold voice inquired,

“Is this your rehabilitated self?”

Bertie jerked himself around, the breath left his lungs in a gust as he recognized the cold, stern features of his brother.

With his brother was a short, thin, scholarly looking gentleman whom Bertie also recognized. This was Professor Overton, president of Mosswood college.

He was peering near-sightedly at Bertie through his horn-rimmed spectacles.

“I say, Professor,” he said to Bertie’s brother, “this chap with the handcuffs on reminds me of your brother.”

“He is my brother,” Bertie’s brother said bitterly. “What’s the charge, officer?” he asked, turning to one of the plain-clothes men.

“Scalping football tickets, peddling without a license, disturbing the peace and probably grand larceny.”

“Grand larceny!” Bertie gasped in outraged indignation. “I haven’t stolen anything.”

“Where’d you get them tickets?”

“I found them,” Bertie said stoutly. Bertie’s brother shook his head grimly.

“This,” he said, “is only a concrete example of what I told you yesterday. You are still mentally and physically incompetent. Anything which I can do to prevent your marrying some unsuspecting girl I most certainly will do. You have disgraced me completely, Bertrand. Continue with your duty, officers.”

Bertie was shoved through the revolving door, his protests and promises flowing back over his shoulder. Outside, one more calamitous experience was awaiting him.

Alighting from a cab at the entrance of the hotel was a slim, lovely blonde girl. As she turned to enter the hotel, Bertie staggered through the revolving door, his handcuffed hands extended before him to keep his balance.

The lovely blonde girl paused for an instant, then with a sob she turned and stepped back into the cab.

Only then did Bertie recognize her.

“Ann!” he cried frantically. “Ann! Things aren’t as bad as they look. This is all a joke. I lost a bet. Ann! Come back.”

But his words were practically smothered in the roar of the cab as it shot away from the curb and into the traffic.

Bertie was left quite alone. Not quite, because the two gray-overcoated officers were still with him. But in spirit he was bleakly and desolately alone.

“Madame Guillotine,” he said blackly, “I embrace you.”

“He’s nuts,” one copper said.

The other nodded.

The American jailing system, in Bertie’s opinion, had not been noticeably improved since last he had favored the institution with his presence.

The cell was small, the doors and windows barred. This last was the worst feature. It gave everything such a definite look.

He had been pacing the floor for five hours and now he gave up and slumped down on the cell’s narrow cot. With a touch of Yogi fatalism he had stopped worrying about Ann and his brother. For all practical purposes they were out of his life forever from henceforth onward. In later years when time had mellowed them, they might begin speaking to him again, but as for the present, he was a dead duck.

It was late afternoon, he decided by glancing up at the window. The Homeric struggle between Mosswood and State was probably in its final period by now. Soon it would be history.

He began pacing again. Of course losing the esteem and affection of his girl and his brother was a disastrous blow, but missing the annual game with State was no light matter in itself.

The fact that almost a thousand dollars of his money was on Mosswood only increased his feeling of frustration.

Overcome by anxiety he grabbed the bars and jerked at them foolishly.

“I want to get out of here,” he shouted. “Let me out, do you hear?” There was a rustle behind him.

“I hear you, Master!” a soft, toneless voice whispered.

“What’s that?” Bertie said, startled. He peered through the bars into the empty corridor. “Who said that?”

“I, Xanthos, have heard you and am here to do your bidding, Master.”

This time Bertie turned around and saw a vague crouching shape in one dark corner of the cell. At the same time he remembered his experience with the demons the night before. Another thing dawned on him. He suddenly realized from where the football tickets had come. Xanthos, or one of his ghoul apprentices, had obviously been responsible for that. He was surprised that he hadn’t thought of this before.

“Well, Xanthos,” he said sternly. “It seems that everything you do gets me into trouble. I can’t say as I like it either.”

“I am sorry,” the cold lifeless voice said, “but I cannot help that. I must obey your commands.”

“Supposing I give you a command right now,” Bertie asked cautiously. “What then?”

“I would obey.”

“Supposing I would tell you to get me out of this blasted jail?”

“It would be accomplished.”

“Then,” Bertie said contentedly, “your days of unemployment are over. Get to work.”

“As you wish, Master.”

The dark shape in the corner flitted out of the range of his vision and the next instant he felt a pair of sharp claws resting on his shoulder.

“Do not be alarmed,” Xanthos’ voice was almost in his ear. “I am on your shoulder. We will leave together.” Bertie started to turn his head but Xanthos’ voice, suddenly as chilling as ice, stopped him.

“Do not look as you value your sanity!”

“Why?” Bertie asked stubbornly. “Do not look,” Xanthos repeated. “You would not — like what you would see. I am not — pleasing to the eye.”

“Sorry, old chap,” Bertie said, touched. “I know just how you feel. I was self-conscious when I had pimples on my face. All in the mind, though, all in the mind. Just forget about how you look and people won’t notice you.”

“Let us leave,” Xanthos said.

“Sure thing,” Bertie said eagerly. “Just how do we go about it? Ride away on a broom?”

“Certainly not,” Xanthos answered. “My method is less involved.”

Bertie heard a sharp metallic click, then the barred door of the cell swung open.

“Well, well,” he exclaimed delightedly. “That is simple.”

He stepped jauntily from the cell. With the confidence that Xanthos could handle any situation that might arise, he strode cheerfully down the corridor. The heavy steel door that separated the cell block from the jailer’s office looked impregnable. But before he reached it, it swung ponderously open.

The warden was dozing comfortably before a pot-bellied stove when he heard the hinges of the massive door creak warningly. He opened his eyes and struggled to his feet just as Bertie sauntered nonchalantly into his office.

His hand speared for the gun at his hip.

Bertie felt an uncomfortable sensation at the pit of his stomach.

“Now don’t do anything rash,” he said nervously.

His admonition was unnecessary. For the warden’s bulging, incredulous gaze was riveted in horror at a point about five inches above Bertie’s left shoulder.

His lips twisted and the gun slid from his limp fingers. Then with a soft moan he pitched forward to the floor.

“That is fortunate,” Xanthos said drily. “When he comes to he will think this was just a nightmare. Had he remained conscious any longer he would spend the rest of his life in a strait jacket.”

“You can’t be that bad,” Bertie scoffed. “You’ve got a touch of an inferiority complex, that’s all. You ought to read Dale Carnegie. He’d straighten you out.”

“Nevertheless,” Xanthos said, “I shall make myself invisible for the rest of our trip. You may look now with safety.”

Bertie turned his head and saw nothing. But he could still feel the grip of the claws on his shoulder.

“What is your wish now?” Xanthos inquired.

“I’ll let you know when we get to the game,” Bertie said, glancing through the window at the setting sun. “That is if we get there on time.”

When they arrived at the jam-packed stadium the minutes of the fourth quarter were ticking away and Mosswood College was trailing by six points.

Bertie squirmed his way through the crowd to the middle of the field. One anguished glance told him that State was threatening to score again.

They had the ball on the Mosswood’s thirty yard line. And on their first play from scrimmage a fleet-footed State back broke loose and streaked for the Mosswood goal.

“Xanthos!” Bertie cried. “Do something!”

“This seems beyond my ken,” Xanthos answered. There was a bewildered note in the demon’s voice. “Everything is so confused and upset. What is it you want me to do?”

“Stop that man!” Bertie shrieked. “That man that the others are chasing. “Don’t let him get away.”

“As you wish,” Xanthos muttered.

Bertie felt the claws on his shoulders tighten. But his eyes were riveted on the sprinting State back. He was racing down the field, yards ahead of the nearest Mosswood player... Past the fifteen... the ten... the five...

“Xanthos!” Bertie screamed. “You’re a washout. You’re fired. You—”

The words froze on his lips. For an incredible, unimaginable thing had happened on the field. Along the end of the gridiron, just before the goal line, a huge yawning pit had miraculously opened.

From this black pit flames shot forth, forking their way through the belching waves of sulphur laden smoke which poured out with them.

The touchdown-bound State back wheeled from this trench of hideous fire and brimstone and, with a wild bellow of fright, raced in the opposite direction.

A solid roar of incredulous sound burst from the throats of the spectators. On the field the two teams milled about in hopeless confusion and bewilderment. All, that is, except the State back who was still legging it in the opposite direction, the ball held tightly under one arm.

In the wild, screaming crowd there was only one person who had any idea of what had happened. And that was Bertie Crimmins. He knew that Xanthos had been the agency behind this miraculous demonstration-The knowledge brought him a warm glow of contentment. How could he lose with such forces backing him?

Listening to the excited comments about him he realized that no one had an accurate idea of what had happened. There was a different and conflicting story on every pair of lips.

Then a new roar broke from the crowd.

The frantically fleeing State back was racing for the Mosswood College goal line! Those of his teammates who had recovered their senses started after him, shouting desperately.

But the roar of the crowd drowned out their voices, and amid a deafening volume of noise, the State back galloped over the wrong goal line, giving Mosswood six points and tying up the game.

Bertie relaxed, sighing happily.

The game was tied up now, and with a bit of assistance from Xanthos, it would soon be in the bag. At least from the wreckage of his life he could salvage his bets and start anew.

“Well done, Xanthos,” he said complacently. “Now just arrange things for a Mosswood touchdown and everything will be jake.”

There was no answer.

“Xanthos!” he said sharply. “Do you hear me?”

Silence.

A bead of perspiration stood out on Bertie’s forehead. There was a cold empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Xanthos!” he said pleadingly. “Don’t get in a sulk now. I really need you.”

There was no answer. And when the game ended a few moments later, a tie twelve to twelve, there was still no evidence of Xanthos.

Bertie’s head sagged forward against his chest. The crowd surged past his lonely figure but he hardly noticed. Time passed. It was almost dark before Bertie stood up and left the stadium.

He realized with bitter clarity that his thoughtless dismissal of Xanthos had been final and definite. He had fired Xanthos. And Xanthos evidently meant to stay fired.

There was only one bright spot in the otherwise gray scheme of things. He hadn’t lost all of his money. In the case of a tie all bets were off, but this was somehow negative compensation in the face of all he had lost.

He hailed a cab dispiritedly and gave his brother’s address. With a moody sigh he decided to leave town and lose himself to society. Years later he might emerge from the Australian bush, calm and kindly, forgetting the slings and arrows that had driven him there. Now they pressed on his soul like a drab pall. Life was very sad.

In this same cheerless state of mind, he entered his brother’s home. The light was on in the library and he could hear the low murmur of voices from the room. His hopes of slipping by unnoticed were blasted sky high as his brother suddenly appeared in the doorway, his face flaming with excitement.

“Bertie!” he shouted in a most unscholarly voice. “Come in here.”

With a fatalistic sigh Bertie entered the library. What devil’s brew was being hatched for him now he had no idea. Nor did he care. Nothing could ever bother him again.

Professor Overton, president of Mosswood, was standing beside his brother’s desk.

“It is absolutely incredible,” Bertie heard him murmur.

“What is, sir?” Bertie asked blankly.

“Bertie,” his brother said imploringly, “for once in your life think carefully. Did you write this?”

He thrust an envelope before Bertie, on which was scrawled — in Bertie’s handwriting — the words he had copied from the parchment.

“Why, I guess I did,” Bertie said.

“You guess?” his brother shouted. “Don’t you know?”

“Why yes,” Bertie said, a little startled by his brother’s vehemence, “I did write it. I copied it from the parchment that I found in the drawer of your desk.”

“This parchment?” his brother asked, extending the ancient papyrus toward him.

Bertie looked at it closely. Yes, it was the same one. Same paper, same ink — No! It wasn’t written in English as the other had been. It couldn’t be the same paper. The hieroglyphic scrawls on this parchment looked like the tracks of an inebriated chicken.

“Bertie,” his brother said weakly, “This writing on the back of the envelope which you claim to have written is a perfect translation of this parchment document which the entire university has been working on for two years. How did you do it?”

Bertie blinked as his brother’s words seeped into his brain. It didn’t really make sense even then. As far as he could gather he was being accused of having done something rather clever. This was so surprising that it rendered him speechless.

He was sure he hadn’t translated the abstruse and unintelligible document. The parchment from which he had copied had been as easy to read as English. He was opening his mouth to deny any connection with the translation when a staggering thought struck him.

Maybe he had actually translated it. At the time he had been under the influence of the Mystic Clarification formula and maybe the hieroglyphic symbols had only seemed to be English. That, undoubtedly, was it!

He paused and lighted a cigarette nonchalantly.

“How did I do it?” he repeated his brother’s question casually. “Well I hardly see how I can explain it to you. The principle involved is rather intricate. Tell me: Have you ever heard of the reverse double wing system?” His brother and Professor Overton shook their heads humbly.

Bertie smiled patronizingly.

“You see?” he said. “We just don’t have any common basis for discussion.”

“Bertie,” his brother said in a strangled voice, “when did you take up the study of philology?”

“Always liked the stuff,” Bertie said genially. “Sort of a hobby. Fine way to spend winter evenings.”

The front door bell rang then, saving Bertie from more embarrassing and penetrating questions.

A second later and Ann walked into the room, looking more blonde and more lovely than he had ever seen her. She stopped abruptly when she saw him.

“I didn’t come to see you,” she said stiffly. “I only came to leave a message for you that I was leaving.”

“Can’t all this wait a moment,” Professor Overton broke in testily. “Young man,” he said to Bertie, “I would be honored if you would consider joining the faculty staff of Mosswood College. Men of your erudition and intelligence are all too few in this troubled world. Mosswood needs you.”

Bertie’s brother laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ve wronged you, Bertie. I can see that now. It makes me feel ashamed of myself. You can expect my blessing on anything you intend doing. Particularly if you are figuring on setting up a partnership.”

Bertie turned toward Ann, and in three seconds flat she was in his arms.

“Darling,” she murmured against his coat, “I don’t understand any of it, but you seem like a new person. I’m sure that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for your having been arrested and everything.”

“There certainly is,” Bertie said happily. “Fact is, they caught me with the goods. No! I mean it was all a case of mistaken identity.”

He put his arms about the girl of his dreams and sighed happily. One minute he had been hopelessly crushed and the next thing he’d been transported to the clouds.

He was conscious that his brother was beaming fondly upon him and that even Professor Overton was bestowing admiring glances in his direction. Everything was excellent. Except — “By the way,” he said casually, “there’s a leather bound book on your desk that kind of interested me. All about — demons and such. Anything to that stuff, you suppose?”

His brother laughed heartily.

“I know the book,” he said. “It would take someone with the mind of a child to believe in the existence of such creatures. Demons. The very idea is ridiculous.”

“So it is,” Bertie said. “So it is.” He laughed at the absurdity of it all and then he kissed Ann very soundly. Later, however, he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that as he was kissing her a toneless voice whispered, “Very excellent effort, Master.”

Daughter of the Snake God

First published in Fantastic Adventures, May 1942.

Chapter I

“Allan! Do you hear me? Allan!”

The voice finally penetrated the fog of concentration that surrounded Allan Curtis and he looked up to see his secretary standing in the doorway of the stockroom.

“Ah, oh, yes, Miss Matthews,” he said abstractedly. He checked the last of a long list of supply cases on the typewritten sheet in his hand.

Jo Matthews, the young lady in question, moved back quickly to avert a collision as he stepped toward her.

“Allan,” she repeated sharply, “I’ve sent the check list to the docks.”

Allan Curtis halted, then.

“Good, Miss Matthews,” he said abstractedly. When lost in his fogs he always addressed her formally. “That’s fine. I’ve just finished making a final check on our crates. The list seems in order.”

He handed her the typewritten sheets he’d been holding. Sighing, Jo Matthews took them. Her lovely features wore the affectionately despairing look of a mother worrying over an idiot offspring.

“Have you made certain your luggage is in order, Allan?” Jo asked.

Allan Curtis nodded, standing toward his private office.

“Yes. Yes, I’ve done that. How about your stuff? Got it ready?”

Jo’s blue eyes were amused. She’d told him her luggage was packed on at least four occasions this morning. She followed after him, into his office.

“Yes, Allan. My bags are ready. I’ve had them sent to the dock hours ago.”

“Hmmmm,” Curtis muttered, scarcely hearing, “that’s fine. Just fine. Rather early to send them, wasn’t it?” He sat down behind his rich mahogany desk and began shuffling through papers.

“I’ve told you that there’s a war going on,” Jo said. “It takes plenty of time to get things through inspection these days.”

“Hmmmm,” Curtis agreed. “That’s right. The war makes it difficult, doesn’t it?”

Jo’s eyes went suddenly impatient with annoyance.

“Difficult? Really, Allan,” her tone was one of exasperated bewilderment, “doesn’t anything bother you? I really don’t believe the fact that our nation is facing one of the most gigantic struggles in its history, has yet penetrated your mind. You probably haven’t a thought in your head but those stuffy Peruvian ruins and rotting fossil bones.”

“Just ruins,” Curtis corrected her. “We aren’t out after bones this trip.” He looked up, his eyes suddenly twinkling. “Really, Jo, I don’t think you’re the least bit pleased about this first chance to come along on an expedition.”

“Well,” said the girl in mock elation, “he called me ‘Jo.’ He must have emerged from the Peruvian jungles long enough to remember I had a first name.”

Curtis grinned.

“It was a long time before I called you anything but Miss Matthews, Jo. I got into a habit that I still fall back on now and then, when I’m thinking of something else.”

Jo Matthews sighed. Then her voice became imperceptibly softer.

“I’m really excited over this trip, Allan. And I’m terribly grateful to be going along. I know that you went to a lot of unnecessary trouble with the museum people to persuade them to let me come as your assistant. But even so, Allan, I can’t help thinking sometimes that now, I mean since December, the importance of things like this have dimmed a great deal.”

Allan Curtis lighted a cigarette.

He blew out the match and flicked it unerringly into a priceless Inca jug that stood in the corner.

He inhaled deeply, then spoke smilingly through a swirl of blue smoke.

“The importance of anything is only relative, Jo,” Curtis said. “What might seem to be important to the world of today is, after all, only measured by the countless centuries in time that went before it, and will undoubtedly follow it. Just because this world goes mad, I see no reason to let my intelligence be swept away in the emotional turmoil of others.”

Jo Matthew’s lovely mouth was set. “No,” she snapped, “I don’t believe you are capable of reacting emotionally.”

Curtis was still smiling, tolerantly. “Do you think the wheels of science, research, progress and discovery should stop while the world goes mad?”

“There will be an end to progress and civilization, science and research — of the decent democratic way — if we lose this war, Allan. I think certain things can be set aside until the objective is accomplished, otherwise we’ll ultimately lose those things.”

Allan Curtis shrugged.

“I’ve spent most of my rather young life prowling about the ruins of ancient civilizations, Jo. Those were civilizations as great, in their time, as our own is now. They died. But the world didn’t die. Progress didn’t die.”

Jo’s eyes were moist.

“But don’t you see what I mean, Allan? You could turn your knowledge, your mind, to the accomplishment of far more important tasks for the duration. I know that your career has been and will always be your very life. But the careers, the lives, the futures of all of us are menaced beyond realization.”

“Then you think this expedition of ours will be of no real consequence?” Curtis asked.

“I didn’t say exactly that,” Jo declared in exasperation. “It has its place, I’ll admit, and it is important in the normal scheme of things. But now the normal scheme of life has been abandoned. There are relatively more important missions for all of us.”

“Ahhh,” Curtis grinned irritatingly, “now we get to the crux of the matter. You think I should be putting my shoulder to another wheel, right?”

Jo’s eyes flashed defensively. “Yes, Allan. You have one of the finest young minds in this nation. You’re capable, strong, with a tremendous amount of valuable knowledge of almost every god-forsaken jungle in the world. I’m certain there are things other than puttering in decayed ruins which you could do to serve. Things that would utilize your knowledge, your youth, your ability for our country’s effort.”

“You make me blush, Jo. I never thought secretaries thought so highly of their employers.”

Jo turned angrily toward the door. “Sometimes I think quite the opposite, Allen. If I didn’t think you talk as you do merely because you’re blinded to actuality, I wouldn’t be your secretary.”

Curtis looked at the tip of his cigarette. His eyes were still amused. “Then your unswerving loyalty still persists because you hope to make me see the light, eh?”

Jo paused. The anger left her lovely face. Her eyes were serious.

“Your attitude might be blind for the present, Allan, but I’m sure your mind will rouse you to your responsibilities fairly soon. And when it does, well,” Jo colored, “you’ll have a secretary who is as proud of her boss as she is loyal.”

Curtis seemed suddenly embarrassed. He returned his scrutiny to the lighted end of his cigarette. Then suddenly, clearing his throat, he changed the subject.

“Our tickets are all arranged for, Jo?”

“Passports, visas, tickets, all in order,” she smiled. “And please, please, don’t get lost in one of your fogs and miss the boat. It leaves at four o’clock. I’ll meet you on the ship’s end of the gangplank.”

Curtis grinned.

“No,” he promised, “I won’t be late. I’ve never missed a sailing time yet.”

“What about the Tahitian trip?” Jo reminded him accusingly.

Curtis reddened.

“Well, I might amend that by saying I almost never miss a sailing time. Four o’clock. Top of the gangplank. I’ll see you then, Jo. You’d better run along now. I know the female of the species is always beset by a thousand last-minute details before going anywhere.”

Jo raised one eyebrow.

“Really, Allan, sometimes I think you aren’t completely hopeless.”

Curtis looked up.

“Eh, what d’you mean?”

“Sometimes you actually seem aware that there is such a thing as a female of the species. Your remark about details almost indicates that you observe the species occasionally.” Jo’s voice was mockingly analytical, but her eyes held another emotion not quite completely masked.

Curtis, however, had turned his attention back to the papers on the desk before him. He answered without looking up.

“Is that so? Guess I must have read it somewhere in a book.”

Jo gave him a long glance and sighed in despair.

“See you at the ship,” she said. “Right.”

Curtis didn’t look up as Jo Matthews left the office. He heard the door shut behind her and continued his scrutiny of the papers before him for another full minute before he raised his head.

He crushed out his cigarette, rose, and stepped to the door of his own office. He closed it, flicking the lock switch. Then he went back to his desk and, still standing, leaned over it to an ancient shield which hung on the wall.

Carefully, Curtis took down the shield. There was a wall safe on the surface it had been covering. Expertly he flicked the dial until the combination clicked the tumblers. Then he swung it open. He brought forth a thick manila envelope, then sat down at his desk as he opened it.

There were at least a dozen papers inside, but Curtis sheafed through the stack until he’d found the three he sought. On the top of each there was the letterhead reading: “Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.”

He hastily read through each of these letters, as if making one last check on instruction data he had already committed to memory. Then, apparently satisfied, he placed them in his large ashtray. He found a match.

Moments later, Curtis watched the letters burn to blackened ashes in the tray. Then, after carefully powdering the ashes with his thumb, he emptied the tray into the wastebasket at his feet. He put the remaining papers back in the envelope, stood up and returned them to the wall safe, closed the safe and twisted the dial right and left.

After Curtis had replaced the ancient shield in its position on the wall, he stepped over to the door, unlocked it, and moved out into the reception office.

His luggage was there, five traveling bags. His trunks, he recalled, were already aboard the ship.

Curtis stepped to the window of his office, a window looking from Telegraph Hill toward San Francisco Bay.

Lighting another cigarette, Curtis stood there a moment, gazing idly down into the street beneath him.

Against the building on the other side of the street, standing half in the concealment of the doorway, were two men. One wore a camel’s hair topcoat, the other merely a blue serge suit. Both had gray fedoras.

The one with the camel’s hair topcoat was apparently reading a newspaper, while the chap in the serge suit passed idle conversation with him.

Curtis stood at the window watching this, waiting to see if either would look up at him. Then, smiling grimly, he drew the Venetian blinds.

Crossing the reception room, he went to his luggage, selected a bag, placed it on a desk and opened it. Inside, atop some shirts and papers, was an automatic pistol. Next to it lay a leather shoulder holster. Curtis removed the gun and the holster and restrapped the bag.

He slipped out of his coat, arranged the holster, and placed the gun in it. Then he put his coat on once again, buttoned it, and looked down, satisfied that the weapon was well enough concealed.

He glanced at his wrist watch. Three-fifteen. He stepped to the telephone to call for a taxi...

Chapter II

Rendezvous with a Killer

The small, dingy waterfront café was typical of the dozens that lined the narrow streets of San Francisco’s harbor district. A few small tables covered with dirty red-checkered cloths were set up in the middle of the floor. Dark, and curtained booths lined three of the walls.

At a small bar a sleepy looking bartender presided. Two unsavory waiters leaned negligently against the wall.

The only distinctive feature of this particular café was the couple that occupied the booth closest to the door.

They sat quietly, not talking, and only occasionally sipping from the small glasses of brandy before them.

The man was tall, with heavy sloping shoulders that bulged slightly against his smoothly-fitting, conservative suit. His hair was blond and combed straight back from his high shining forehead. In contrast to his square, almost cruel jaw, his eyes were a soft blue, surprisingly out of place in his hard face.

The woman could have been twenty-five or she could have been forty-five. She was immaculately groomed and dressed, and her complexion was as flawless and as smooth as a child’s.

But her eyes were strangely lacking in warmth. They were like two perfect diamonds, hard, cold and ageless. Hair the color of new wheat fell in rippling waves-to her shoulders, but she was not beautiful, although she should have been. If there had been more expression in her face, or warmth in her eyes, she would have possessed an ethereal allure. As it was, her very frigidity and aloofness seemed to encase her in a shell of icy mystery that had the effect of repelling rather than attracting.

She raised her glass slowly and over the rim her eyes met those of her companion.

“Our friend is late,” she murmured.

The man glanced at his watch and a faint expression of annoyance touched his features.

“There is plenty of time,” he muttered. “The ship does not leave until four. Are you sure, my dear Maria, of your role?”

The woman sipped her drink slowly.

“Perfectly sure. As your devoted sister, Maria von Wessel, I have a simple part to play. Yours is by far the more difficult, my dear Kurt.”

A faint mocking undertone colored the woman’s soft voice, as she added, “Your role demands that you display a certain amount of brotherly affection toward your dear ‘sister.’ That will be a difficult part for you to play.”

The man shrugged irritably.

“You must keep your emotions out of your work, Maria. If there was ever anything between us, we must forget it.”

“You have, of course, my dear Kurt.”

Kurt von Wessel’s deceptively soft eyes frosted slightly.

“Maria, my dear, your beauty has made you extremely useful to the Cause. When your attractiveness is past, your usefulness is over. Remember that one fact and control your feelings.”

He toyed idly with his glass and his smile was delicately cruel.

“It would be a pity,” he said, “if I were forced to report that your allure was dimming. Even now, in this highly unflattering light, I can see a faint wrinkle at the corner of your mouth.”

The woman’s hand moved instinctively toward her cheek. Kurt smiled as he saw the gesture. Maria checked herself and folded her hands calmly in her lap.

“You are a beast,” she said softly.

Kurt von Wessel lifted his glass and smiled.

“But, of course,” he said.

They were silent for a while, both occupied with thinking. It was the sudden opening of the café’s door that brought them to life.

“Is it he?” Kurt asked quietly.

Maria raised herself slightly from the seat. When she settled back her face was suddenly pale. Her slim white fingers trembled as she pulled the brim of her hat over her eye, concealing the side of her face.

“What is it?” Kurt asked sharply.

A tall, slim, olive-skinned young man strode past their booth before she could answer. He didn’t look at them but continued on to the bar, where he ordered a double whiskey in a loud voice.

He was elegantly dressed and quite handsome in the dark Latin manner. His flashing white teeth stood out sharply against his dark skin, and his luminous brown eyes were good-naturedly rakish.

“Who is he?” Kurt demanded. “What are you afraid of?”

“Quiet,” Maria hissed. “Do you want him to hear every word you say? He is a young fool I met in Peru a year or so ago. His name is Carlos Benevadas. I think his father is a diplomatic official. It wouldn’t do for him to see me now. He knew me as Sonya Karlstad, a Norwegian refugee.”

“Was your business with him official?” Kurt asked, a tight smile playing about his lips.

“Yes. Of course there were several unofficial interludes. The fool thought he was madly in love with me.”

“I see,” Kurt nodded. “I see you were able to forget me long enough to indulge in — ah — unofficial interludes with this hot-blooded young Latin. Very touching example of your constant devotion to me.”

Maria’s cheeks flamed angrily.

“I have thrown myself at many men,” she said hoarsely. “It has never bothered you. And it has meant nothing to me.”

“Let us not become hysterical,” Kurt suggested quietly, “I will draw the shades of the booth. Your young admirer will soon be gone.”

He stood up and jerked the dark curtains over the entrance of the booth. Maria turned her hat back from her eyes.

For several moments they waited in silence, their drinks untouched.

Then they heard quick footsteps crossing the floor, a careless laugh and an instant later the sound of the café door slamming.

“Ah,” said Kurt, “the coast is again clear.”

He glanced at his watch and frowned. He fingered his glass impatiently.

“Has the fool forgotten,” he growled.

“Maybe he didn’t receive the instructions,” Maria suggested. “In America now it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue our contacts. The federal agents of this country are very efficient.”

“They are a lot of fools,” Kurt snapped. “In Germany we shoot traitors and spies. Here, until only a few months ago, they allowed them the use of the press and radio to spread their doctrines. Well, their complacent carelessness has been our strongest ally.”

He drummed his fingers nervously on the table. Finally they heard the sound of the café door opening. Kurt stood up and cautiously drew back the curtain of the booth.

An almost imperceptible sigh of relief escaped him.

Standing inside the doorway was a chunky, red-faced man, with closely cropped light hair, and a thin scar running along his jaw line.

When the man’s small, cold-blue eyes met Kurt’s they glinted with recognition. With a rolling stride he advanced to the booth and bowed from the waist.

“I have the tickets for the gentleman and his sister,” he said softly. He glanced over his shoulder at the sleepy bartender and the indifferent waiters. “Everything is arranged.”

“Sit down,” Kurt said.

The chunky red-faced man drew a chair to the table and seated himself.

“You know the man?” Kurt asked.

“Yes.”

“You are sure?”

“I am positive. I have studied his pictures. I have a complete physical description of him. There can be no chance of a mistake.”

“Excellent. He must not leave the Ventura alive.”

“Everything has been arranged,” the red-faced man said stolidly.

“How long have you been a steward on the Ventura?” Kurt asked the man suddenly.

“Three years,” the man answered. “But this is my last trip. It is no longer safe.”

“This is the most important trip you will ever make,” Kurt said slowly. “Remember that. And remember too, not to indicate by so much as a raised eyebrow that you have ever seen me or my ‘sister’ before, when we come on the boat. This man is no fool. We can take no chances. Do not speak to us. Do not look at us. Do nothing to invite suspicion.”

“I understand my job,” the red-faced man said impassively.

“Good. Now, leave us. Good luck to you.”

“Thank you sir.”

The man stood up and the pale light of the café threw a silvery edge on the long scar on his chin. His blue eyes were coldly expressionless as he bowed formally and left.

Maria shuddered slightly as the door closed.

“Cold, my dear?” Kurt asked.

Maria finished her drink quickly and set the glass down.

“No. It was that man. He — he is a killer.”

Kurt von Wessel looked at her for an instant with a thoughtful expression on his face. Finally he smiled ironically and his soft blue eyes were amused.

“Precisely, my dear,” he said.

Chapter III

An “Accident”

On the passenger deck of the South American Steamship Ventura, Jo Matthews leaned against the railing and gazed out at the scene of crowded activity on the dock below.

Passengers, stevedores, inspectors, ship stewards hustled back and forth in the shouting commotion, brushing past lines of well-wishers gathered to bid bon voyage to departing friends and relatives.

Thronging up the gangplank, singly and in groups of four and five, other passengers, late arrivals and their retinues of well-wishing friends, came noisily aboard.

There were uniformed men, in naval and army attire — some whose high rank was indicated by the gold and silver braid that bedecked them — also dotting the embarking swarms in more profusion than Jo had seen since war began.

Nervously, now, Jo glanced at her watch.

“Twenty of four,” she murmured anxiously. “Oh, I do hope the lanky lout will remember he’s a boat to catch.”

“You are waiting for someone, Senorita?”

The voice, low, polite and definitely Latin came to Jo’s ears suddenly, causing her to turn sharply in surprise.

A tall, olive-complexioned, smiling young man with wavy dark hair faced her.

Jo raised an eyebrow.

“Well, really,” she began.

The tall young Latin grinned in a manner meant to be apologetically friendly. There was something assuringly nice about the twinkle in his brown eyes.

“I do not intend to intrude, Senorita.

Especially if I am unwelcome. Excuse me, if you feel I have affronted you.” He was still grinning.

In spite of herself, Jo smiled.

“My name, Senorita,” the Latin declared, “is Carlos Benevedas.”

“And mine,” said Jo, “is Jo Matthews. I’m glad to meet you, Senor Benevedas, even though this is slightly out of my usual insistence on formal introductions.”

Carlos Benevedas laughed.

“It is so, Senorita. I knew it instantly I spoke. But permit me to assure you that this is a usual fashion of introduction aboard shipboard. People are never so rigidly formal at sea, especially when bound for South American ports.”

“I needn’t be bright,” Jo smiled, “to hazard, then, that you are South American?”

Benevedas’ white teeth flashed in another smile.

“More exactly, I am Peruvian. We in South America are often touchy about being so generally classed.”

“You are returning home?” Jo asked.

Carlos Benevedas nodded.

“After a short stay in your most delightful country.”

“I’m glad you like it here,” Jo said. And then she added: “I hope most of you feel the same about this country.”

“I am sure your country will be publicly assured of that fact within the next several weeks,” Benevedas replied.

“You mean the South American Solidarity movement, of course?” Jo asked.

The young Peruvian nodded.

“Precisely.”

“That’s reassuring,” said Jo. “I’d like to pass that information on to our State Department.”

Benevedas laughed appreciatively.

“But tell me, Senorita,” he said after a moment, “you are waiting for someone, are you not? I know I noticed you glancing at your watch with much anxiety. Perhaps a fellow passenger?”

“An excellent guess, Senor,” Jo said. “I’m just praying that my boss, who has one of the most fuzzy memories of any man on earth, won’t forget he has a sailing appointment.”

“You are going to South America on business?” Benevedas asked.

“Yes,” Jo nodded. “This is my first long trip, and I’m still dizzy from the thought of it. We’re going to your native Peru. My employer, Allan Curtis, is an archaeological curator and part-time explorer.”

“Curtis, Curtis?” Carlos Benevedas put a slim finger to his cheek in recollection. “I do believe I have heard of Professor Curtis.”

“Quite possibly,” Jo said with unconscious pride. “He has done some of the most notable discovery work on Inca ruins. He’s extremely well known in his field.”

“But of course!” Carlos Benevedas exclaimed. “My father — he is in the Peruvian Department of State — once gave a banquet in Lima to honor several noted American archaeologists who were working in our country. I believe your Professor Curtis was one of them.” They both grinned in the warm enthusiasm of those who have found mutual friends.

“Then Professor Curtis must be planning another such expedition?” Carlos Benevedas asked.

Jo nodded.

“And he moved heaven and high water, as a favor to his long-suffering secretary, to get permission from the museum people for me to go along.”

“It will be an experience you shall never forget,” the young Latin promised her. “My country is beautiful beyond imagination. And the interior — you will see much of that I presume — offers such splendor as few men have ever seen.”

“It sounds thrilling,” Jo declared. “Will it be dangerous?”

Benevedas shook his head.

“Not so dangerous that your life would be risked in such an expedition. And with the famed Professor Curtis, who knows our deepest jungles the way an ordinary man knows his own back yard, the expedition would be foolproof. No, it will not be dangerous.”

“I’m slightly disappointed,” she declared. “Allan isn’t very imaginative, but I had a hunch when he told me something about the expedition, and others he’d been on before, that I might get a chance to see something exciting.” Benevedas laughed.

“Exciting things you will see,” he promised. “But danger, I am sure, Professor Curtis will keep from you.”

The trip should be exciting,” Jo said. “The menace of submarines is supposed to be frightful.”

Benevedas nodded soberly.

“Yes, the menace is all you say. But I will warrant that this ship will be more than well protected. Besides, the submarine devils are more concerned with ships carrying valuable cargo than they are passenger vessels. The small cargo this vessel carries would not be worth the price of a torpedo.”

“Are the submarines so well informed as to cargo values and sailing schedules?” Jo asked.

Benevedas waved his hand expressively.

“Senorita, when you have seen as much espionage at work as I have in my own native land, nothing the enemy learns would surprise you. Yes, it is unfortunate that leakages of information very often occur. But I do not think we have too much to fear for the safe journey of this ship.”

Jo suddenly looked down at her watch. It was ten minutes to four. She looked anxiously down at the dock.

“Do not fear, Senorita,” said Benevedas, “a competent man never hurries. Your Senor Curtis should arrive at any moment.”

And then Jo saw the familiar brown fedora of the lanky Allan Curtis bobbing through the crowds on the dockside. Beside him moved several porters with his luggage.

“There he is,” Jo cried in relief.

Benevedas smiled.

“I told you not to be alarmed,” he said. Then: “Would you mind if I waited with you to meet Professor Curtis?”

Jo looked at the tropical handsomeness of Carlos Benevedas, his extravagantly-tailored American attire. She grinned. If anything could bring a twinge to Allan Curtis, it would be the well-meaning attentions of a handsome Latin.

“Not at all,” Jo said. “I’m sure Allan would love to meet you.”

Then Curtis was coming up the gangplank, porters still carrying his grips behind him. He saw Jo, and his generous mouth and long face crinkled in a grin of salute. His eyes, behind the thick horn rims of his glasses, matched the friendly crinkle of his smile.

Jo moved over to the front of the gangplank. Carlos Benevedas was at her side.

“You kept me in terrible suspense,” Jo smiled, as Curtis came up to them.

Curtis grinned.

“The best thing to do with a lady,” he answered.

“Did you read that out of a book, too?” Jo demanded.

Curtis saw Benevedas, then, and looked questioningly at him.

Jo turned slightly.

“Allan, this is Señor Carlos Benevedas, he’s a Peruvian returning to his beloved country. Senor Benevedas, Mr. Allan Curtis.”

“I am charmed,” Benevedas flashed a white grin.

“Glad to meet you,” Curtis declared, shaking hands warmly. “You aren’t related by any chance to Alvardo Benevedas, the Peruvian statesman?”

“He is my father,” Benevedas said proudly. “I was telling Senorita Matthews, just a moment ago, that I recall my father once having had you and another American explorer as his guests at a banquet in Lima.”

“Right you are,” Curtis grinned warmly. “A distinguished and brilliant man, your father.”

“Muy, muy gracias, Señor,” Benevedas smiled, flattered.

A uniformed steward suddenly appeared at Curtis’ elbow. He was a short, chunky, red-faced man. His blond hair was closely cropped, it was apparent even though he wore his uniform cap, and there was a thin scar cleaving the jaw line on the left side of his face.

The steward’s small, cold-blue eyes studied Curtis inquisitively an instant before he spoke.

“You are Mr. Allan Curtis?” he asked.

Curtis nodded.

“That’s correct.”

“If you will pardon the inconvenience, sir, I wish you would have your porters take your luggage over there,” he indicated an open space of deck close to the yawning cargo hatches into which loading cranes were yet dropping crates, “for a last minute inspection.”

Curtis frowned.

“Isn’t that rather irregular? Can’t you go through my stuff in my stateroom?”

The steward smiled.

“I am sorry, sir, and I realize it is somewhat irregular. But there was an anonymous report turned in, undoubtedly a crank call, to the effect that contraband material has been smuggled aboard ship. We were told to check the luggage of any male passengers arriving within ten minutes of sailing time. You are the only one to arrive within that time so far. It is troublesome, but you must understand our necessity to check on any and all such reports in times such as these.”

“Very well,” Curtis said. He turned to his porters. “Follow the steward with the baggage. Put it where he tells you.”

“I’d prefer you to be with me during the inspection,” the steward smiled. “It will be the one courtesy I can extend.”

Curtis nodded, following after the porters and the steward. At the place he’d indicated previously, the steward had the porters drop the luggage. They left, then, and Curtis watched the chunky fellow begin his inspection of the bags.

Above them, huge loading cranes still swung large packing crates up from the dock, over the deck, and lowered them into the yawning cargo hold.

Curiously, Curtis continued to watch the steward as he opened the first bag. Then the steward suddenly straightened erect. He smiled at Curtis.

“If you will excuse me an instant, sir,” he said above the noise of the loading crane winches.

Curtis nodded, and the steward moved off toward a deck cabin door. He turned, as the fellow disappeared inside, and looked back to where Jo still stood talking to Carlos Benevedas.

Jo caught his eye, that instant, and smilingly said something. Curtis didn’t hear it, due to the noise of the winches.

He frowned, moving slightly toward her, cupping his hand to his ear half humorously.

Jo started to repeat what she’d said, raising her voice, and Curtis took four more steps toward her, when he noticed that her words were suddenly frozen in a sharp exclamation of terror.

Bewildered, Curtis started toward her.

It was then that the huge packing case, loaded with small machinery parts, slipped from the loading crane and crashed loudly to the deck, a scant ten feet behind him.

Curtis wheeled, saw the broken case coverings, the scattered iron parts. The complete wreckage of his luggage. The case had fallen exactly on the spot where he’d been standing less than four seconds ago.

Something chill swept the spine of Allan Curtis as he stood there in horrified astonishment, gazing at the shattered packing case that might easily have crushed him lifeless to the deck.

His luggage, buried beneath the parts of the broken case, was almost unrecognizable. But as Curtis ran his tongue momentarily over suddenly dry lips, he realized that he’d made a life-saving trade.

When Jo was at his side, eyes wide with terror and relief, and Benevedas was behind her, his face white in horrified shock. Others who’d been moving around the deck were now crowding around, babbling in shrill excitement.

“Oh, thank God, Allan, thank God!” Jo said again and again.

“What good fortune, Senor,” Benevedas exclaimed in relief and astonishment.

“It’s all right,” Curtis found himself saying calmly. “What might have been a fatal accident was fortunately avoided. That’s all that matters. I can replace the luggage.”

Then the steward, wide-eyed and crimson with surprise, was before him, apologizing profusely, begging to be of any possible service, assuring him of replacement of all baggage.

“It was terrible, sir. Ghastly. I saw the crane starting to lose hold on the crate as I came from the deck cabin. I tried to shout to you. The words choked in my throat. Please forgive the frightful occurrence, sir. I beg of you.”

“It’s all right,” Curtis repeated. “I’ll turn in a statement of the value of the luggage. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like a drink. A rather stiff one.”

On the way to the ship’s bar, Benevedas was still muttering excitedly, breaking into Spanish now and then under the stress of his concern.

Jo had her hand lightly on Curtis’ arm. And though she meant thus to calm him, it was she who trembled.

“What a hideous accident, what a horrible tragedy that almost was,” she declared somewhat shakenly.

“Yes,” Curtis answered. “It was almost the last, ah, er, accident in my life.”

Chapter IV

A Rebuke for Carlos

When Allan Curtis sauntered into the Ventura’s main dining salon, some hours later, he saw that Jo Matthews was already seated at a corner table, chatting with the charming and debonair Carlos Benevedas.

The young Latin-American sprang to his feet with a flourish as Curtis approached.

“Greetings Senor,” he smiled. “The lovely Senorita and I were at the moment discussing your very fortunate escape this afternoon. It was truly remarkable.”

“Yes, wasn’t it,” Curtis said. He sat down and glanced at Jo. “You look nice tonight. I’ve always liked you in that dress. What’s good on the menu?” Jo made a face at him.

“I suppose I should swoon over the fact that you’ve even noticed that I had a dress on,” she said tartly. “And I’m glad you’ve always liked me in this dress because this is the first time I’ve worn it. As to the food tonight, the steak looks good.”

Curtis grinned at her.

“Thanks! I’ll try it. And I still like the dress.”

Carlos sighed heavily.

“Ah! You Americans are so very, very casual about the beauty of your women. In my country we sing songs, we write poems, we compose glorious music to their charms.”

“Sounds like a darn swell country,” Jo said.

“And so it is, Senorita,” Carlos said fervently.

Curtis looked up at the ardent Peruvian, a glint of interest in his eyes.

“How’s the situation with Ecuador these days, Carlos? I don’t keep up with the international situation as I should.”

The young Peruvian shrugged hopelessly.

“The people of Ecuador and the people of Peru desire peace and harmony. Their leaders desire it. But always something happens to prevent the happy union of the two nations. That ‘something’ is the one thing that keeps the political situation of all South America disturbed and unsettled. Imagine what your own great country would be like if two of your States were quarreling among themselves. If Arizona and California had disputes for which there was no amicable settlement, it would affect the tranquillity of the entire nation. The happy settlement of the problems of Peru and Ecuador is the key to domestic tranquillity in South America.”

“And that means that North and South America could present a united front against their common enemy,” Jo said earnestly. She turned impulsively to Curtis. “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing, Allan?”

Curtis looked up from the menu.

“What, Jo?”

“Oh, Allan,” Jo said disgustedly, “you weren’t even listening! Here you are, heading right into one of the most important sections of the world today, and all you’ve got on your mind is a lot of old relics and ruins.”

“Well,” Curtis said practically, “somebody’s got to collect the relics. Might as well be me as the next person. Are you having the steak, too?”

Jo sighed despairingly.

“Yes, I suppose I’m having the steak.”

“Good idea. By the way Carlos what is this ‘something’ that keeps Peru and Ecuador at each other’s throat? You see, I was listening after all.”

“I do not know, Senor. But always it is something. Just when the gods are beginning to smile, ‘something’ happens to prevent a happy settlement. Trouble will break out unexpectedly. A Peruvian minister will be assassinated in Ecuador, or a band of Peruvian soldiers will be set on by Ecuadorian troops. Then there will be rioting and killing and more hatred is stored up in hearts of the people of both countries.”

“It sounds very much to me,” Jo said emphatically, “as if the whole thing might, be Axis espionage. Don’t you think so, Carlos?”

“It is difficult to prove, Senorita,” Carlos replied gravely. “What do you think, Senor Curtis?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Curtis said. “I never gave it much thought, I guess. Espionage has always seemed to me something that occurred in books for the most part.”

“That,” Jo said, “is a typical statement coming from you, Mr. Curtis. You can’t see the storm signs until you’re up to your neck in trouble.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, Jo,” Curtis said with a grin. “Let’s mix something else for a change. How about a drink?”

“You’re hopeless, I’m afraid,” Jo said a little angrily. “So we might as—”

She let the sentence trail off uncompleted.

“What’s the matter?” Curtis asked.

Jo was looking over his shoulder to the main door of the dining room. Curtis twisted around curiously in his chair.

“It’s nothing,” Jo laughed. “My attention was distracted by that distinguished couple who’ve just entered. Do you know them?”

Curtis easily located the couple Jo referred to. The man was tall and blond with a hard, impassive face. The woman was also blonde, but her complexion was as clear and fine as a young girl’s. There seemed to be something curiously detached about her, as if she wore an invisible cloak of enchanted mystery.

They stood under the archway of the door, seemingly oblivious to the comment their entrance had occasioned. The woman wore a black satin evening gown that revealed the shimmering grace of her lithe body, and the man was immaculately attired in formal evening clothes.

The woman murmured something to her companion and then she took his arm as they started into the dining salon.

“Dios!” Carlos said unexpectedly. “She is the one. It is impossible that I am mistaken!”

“Oh, do you know her?” Jo asked. “I was hoping there was some way to meet her. She looks very interesting.”

“Why, of course I know her,” Carlos said eagerly. “I met her in my own country a year ago. Would you like me to invite them over to our table?”

Curtis was leaning forward slightly and his lidded gaze was centered on the couple, who were being seated at a table on the opposite side of the room.

“Yes,” he said softly, “bring them over, by all means.”

Jo looked at him queerly.

“Don’t tell me,” she laughed, “that you’ve fallen for the mysterious blonde? It would serve you right to have your heart broken with a shipboard romance.”

Curtis had settled back in his chair. The momentarily tense lines had faded from his face and he was smiling casually again.

“Nothing like that,” he said. “I just thought it’d be fun to have a drink with them.”

“It shall be done,” Carlos said promptly.

He stood up, bowed charmingly to Jo and then marched across the floor to the distinguished couple’s table.

Curtis was in a position to watch their faces as Carlos stepped to their table and bowed smilingly to the lady.

Not a flicker of recognition touched their features as they regarded the young Latin-American.

Curtis glanced at Jo. She, too, was watching the scene absorbedly.

Carlos was speaking to them now, a bewildered expression on his face.

The pale, blonde woman stared coldly at him for an instant, then turned and murmured something to her escort.

The man stood up and said something to Carlos.

Curtis was too far away to hear the remark, but he saw the dull flush of anger that stained the neck and face of the young Carlos Benevedas.

“What’s up?” Jo asked.

Curtis didn’t answer. Every atom of his attention was focused on the scene that was taking place at the other table.

Carlos was speaking now, directly to the woman, and Curtis could see that his hands were clenched into angry fists.

The woman’s thick-shouldered, blond companion spoke sharply to Carlos, then imperiously summoned the head waiter.

His implication was obvious. With one last hot exclamation, Carlos wheeled and marched away from their table. He didn’t return to Curtis and Jo, but strode out of the dining salon.

“Well!” Jo said. “Did you ever see anything like that?”

Curtis was absorbed in the menu again.

“Like what?” he inquired blandly.

“Why,” Jo said indignantly, “those people cut poor Carlos dead. They acted as if they’d never seen him before.”

“Maybe they hadn’t,” Curtis suggested. “Now, how about ordering our dinner?”

“I don’t feel like eating now,” Jo said. “Let’s get some air.”

Outside in the soft velvet of the Pacific night, Jo rested her arms moodily on the rail of the steamer and stared up into the starred heavens.

“That scene upset me,” she said. “I’m sorry if I spoiled your dinner Curtis. It wasn’t very considerate of me, was it?”

“Not a bit,” Curtis said promptly.

“I wonder who those people are?” Jo said.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Jo swung about to face him, her face a pale blur in the darkness.

“Honestly, Allan, you can be the most exasperating person in the world. This is a terrible way for a secretary to talk to her boss, but I feel it’s for your own good. You don’t notice anything that’s going on, because you’re so terribly wrapped up in your work. Even the international situation is just a big joke to you.”

“It isn’t always funny,” Curtis said. He glanced up and down the dark deck and moved slightly away from the girl so that his back was protected by the converging corners of the companionway.

“I won’t bite you,” Jo said peevishly, as Curtis moved. “I’m going to my cabin. You won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

Curtis grinned at her.

“I wasn’t thinking of the danger you hold.”

Chapter V

The Corpse in Curtis’ Cabin

Half an hour later Allan Curtis was still standing in the shadows of the deck, his mind sorting and shuffling the events of the past six hours. Particularly his thoughts centered on the scene he had just witnessed between Carlos and the distinguished couple.

His contemplative smile was without humor as he flipped his cigarette into the air and watched its glowing tip fall through the darkness to the water.

In the game he was playing, a participant was generally allowed only one mistake. And Curtis had reason to believe that someone in the game had already made that mistake.

He turned slowly from the shadow of the companionway and, after a careful, yet casual glance in both directions, he sauntered back toward the passenger cabin section of the ship.

There was one young man he was very anxious to talk with. Carlos Benevedas should have something very interesting to say...

He descended the broad carpeted stairway that led to the lower cabin decks and stopped before the door of his own stateroom.

The lighted corridor was deserted.

Curtis started to insert his key in the door, but it wasn’t necessary. The door was ajar. Curtis frowned and glanced carefully up and down the empty corridor. He was certain that he had locked the door before leaving.

For an imperceptible instant he hesitated. If anyone were in his cabin, Curtis would provide a choice target for him when he opened the door and silhouetted himself against the glaring light of the corridor.

Cautiously he swung the door open about ten inches. Then, with a swift lithe motion, he slipped through the narrow aperture and slammed the door shut.

Back against the wall, hand in his coat pocket, he waited tensely. There was no sound in the cabin other than the heavy pumping of his own heart.

There was no sound, no sudden shot, no rustle of stealthy movement, but Curtis’ keen senses perceived that something was radically wrong.

For a moment he remained motionless in the darkened cabin. Then he snapped on the light.

In the sudden illumination that flooded the room, Curtis saw the body of a man lying face downward on the floor, a long-handled knife protruding from his back.

Grimly Curtis knelt beside the twisted figure. He turned the man over gently and his face hardened as he recognized the death-distorted features of the handsome young Peruvian, Carlos Benevedas!

In the deathly silence of the cabin, Curtis stared at the body of the young Peruvian. His thoughts were churning swiftly, but his long, angular face was expressionlessly blank.

How long he knelt beside the dead man he had no way of knowing, but he was finally aroused by a footstep in the corridor.

He looked up just as the cabin door swung inward and a uniformed figure appeared. Curtis recognized the chunky, red-faced steward who’s insistence on baggage inspection earlier that day had almost caused his accidental death.

The cold blue eyes of the steward took in the scene carefully. His scarred chin moved as he said,

“Accident, sir?”

Curtis didn’t answer immediately. He stood up slowly, giving himself time to think. This was the” man who had been the indirect means of his almost losing his life when the packing crate had crashed to the deck that afternoon. It had been this steward who had led him to that particular spot of the deck. Now he was on hand again, miraculously materializing at another serious occurrence.

“I don’t think it was an accident,” Curtis answered at last. “It isn’t possible to stab a man in the back by accident.”

“Isn’t it, sir?”

Curtis said, “Get the captain and the ship’s doctor.”

The steward hesitated.

“I’ll ring for them from here,” he said. “I don’t think it would be right for me to leave.”

Curtis smiled grimly. He knew what the man was getting at, but he determined to force his hand.

“Why?” he snapped.

The steward faced him stolidly, not a flicker of emotion on his face.

“I must see that you do not leave, sir,” he said.

“Are you accusing me of this murder?” Curtis demanded.

“I am doing nothing but my duty,” the steward replied. “You must realize that the circumstances are suspicious.”

Curtis relaxed then. He had learned what he wanted. He let a helpless look spread over his face.

“Oh my God,” he said. “I see what you mean. But this is so silly! I didn’t kill the man, By all means ring for the captain.”

The captain arrived a few moments later. Curtis was seated in a chair smoking nervously. The steward was standing carefully beside the body, his expression impassive as stone.

The captain was a tall, florid-faced sea dog, with tufts of white hair sticking up ludicrously from his pink scalp.

He took in the scene with one sweeping glance and listened in silence while the steward told him what had happened.

Then he turned to Curtis.

“Mr. Curtis,” he said, folding his arms and squinting down at him. “What do you have to say?”

“Not much,” Curtis said. “I came to my cabin a few moments ago and found this man lying here on the floor with a knife sticking out of his back. While I was kneeling beside the body, the door opened and this steward walked in. That’s all there is to tell.”

The captain stroked his chin and frowned.

“Did you know young Benevedas?”

“Not well,” Curtis said. “I met him for the first time today.”

“Did you dislike him?”

“I told you I hardly knew the man. He seemed very charming and agreeable. I can’t understand who would want to kill him.”

He glanced helplessly at his clenched hands and then said suddenly.

“Steward, how did you happen to come to my cabin tonight? What prompted you to stop in here?”

He looked up and saw the faint shine of perspiration that beaded the stocky steward’s brow. His sudden shot had caught him off balance.

“I–I was walking through the corridor. I thought I heard a noise. I stopped to investigate.”

“Oh, I see,” Curtis said. “That explains it.”

The steward, Curtis knew, was lying. Somehow, he was mixed in this affair. The captain said,

“Mr. Curtis this is a serious affair. Until we definitely discover the murderer of young Benevedas, I shall be forced to insist that you remain in cabin custody.”

Curtis was silent as the captain talked on about the necessity of taking every precaution to apprehend the killer. He was thinking of what it would mean if he were delayed at docking by Peruvian officials, if he were forced to kill time while the routine of a police investigation were carried through.

It would mean—

“I understand your position, Captain,” he smiled suddenly. “I won’t make things any more difficult. You can depend on me to stick to my cabin.”

“We’ll have to post a guard, you understand,” the captain said. “It’s a formality, but a necessary one. The Line is not accusing you nor anyone else. That’s not our job. We’re just following orders. You’ll have your meals here. I’ll send for the doctor now and get — ah — things cleaned up here.”

“I would appreciate it,” Curtis said, “if you would notify Miss Matthews, my secretary, about the state of affairs. If possible, I would like to talk to her about our work.”

“I think that can be arranged,” the captain said. “I’ll inform her myself of this — ahem — accident.”

“Pardon me, sir,” the steward said, “but I feel it my duty to report that Senor Benevedas dined with Mr. Curtis’ secretary tonight. Also that he left suddenly shortly after Mr. Curtis arrived. Senor Benevedas seemed quite angry as he left the dining salon.”

“Just what are you implying?” Curtis demanded. “That Carlos Benevedas and I were fighting over Miss Matthews’ affections?”

“I do not imply anything,” the steward said respectfully. “I only tell what happened.”

“What about this, Curtis?” the captain asked. “Any bad blood between you and Benevedas?”

“None at all,” Curtis said.

He realized he was in an uncomfortable spot, but he now knew definitely the steward’s role in the situation. The steward’s anxiety to add to the evidence against him, was definite proof that he was involved.

He smiled at the man as he moved with the captain to the door.

“Thanks,” he said, grinning. “You’ve told me just what I wanted to know.” The steward’s face was gloatingly triumphant as he closed the door.

Chapter VI

An “Escape”

It was almost an hour later when Jo Matthews, breathless and white-faced, arrived at the cabin to which her employer had been confined.

She found a guard posted outside the stateroom and, inside, Allan Curtis striding nervously back and forth before his bunk, taking deep and frequent draughts from a cigarette.

“Oh, Allan,” she exclaimed, distraught. “Is it really true? They told me Carlos Bene—”

“Yes,” Curtis cut in quietly. “Yes, Carlos was murdered. I found him in my room, stabbed in the back. A steward, the same one who started to inspect my luggage before the almost-accident this afternoon, burst into my cabin while I was kneeling over the body.”

Jo’s face was bewildered, frightened.

“That’s horrible,” she gasped. “But surely they can’t think that you—”

Again Curtis cut in, pausing in his pacing.

“My friend the steward summoned the captain immediately. Then, before I knew it, he was implying to the captain that I had a quarrel with Carlos over his attentions to you, and that young Benevedas left the dining salon in a rage.”

“But surely the captain didn’t belie—”

Once more Curtis interrupted her.

“I don’t know what the captain believed,” he said. “I don’t think he took what the steward said with any too much consideration. But I was found with a man who was slain in my cabin stateroom. Any further investigation of the matter until we reach port is beyond possibility. The Peruvian authorities will take charge when we dock. In the meantime, being the solitary suspect of any sort, they feel obliged to keep me in a sort of semi-gracious custody.”

“Oh, Allan,” Jo cried, dropping to a lounge chair and putting a slim hand on her forehead. “This is simply frightful! Poor, poor Carlos — they can’t think that you’d have reason to kill him. You only met him for the first time less than ten hours ago!”

“All that will be proved,” Allan said. “I’m not worried about my ability to prove I had nothing to do with it.” Relief shone on Jo’s face.

“Then you’re sure they won’t try to embroil you in it?”

Curtis crushed out his cigarette. “No,” he said assuredly, “they’ll merely have a brief investigation and release me.”

Jo rose.

“Then why,” she asked, “do you seem so visibly agitated? Why were you pacing the stateroom like a furious bear when I entered?”

Curtis looked at her wordlessly for an instant, as if debating his answer. Then he removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, placed them in his pocket, and took out a handkerchief with which he mopped his brow.

“I am anxious,” he said, “over the costly delay this will mean to our expedition.”

Jo looked at him with what almost amounted to incredulity. She shook her head slowly from side to side, as if refusing to believe what she’d heard.

“Allan,” she declared, “I don’t think you’ll ever fall out of character, even for an instant. Murder occurs, you are involved, placed in custody — and yet your only worry, your only apparent concern, is the delay it will cause your precious prowling about in dusty, ancient ruins!”

Curtis grinned at this biting characterization of himself. He shrugged.

“As I told you not so long ago, Jo,” he declared, “the real importance of things is merely relative — depending on how you view them.”

Jo Matthews sighed.

“Sometimes I think I know you better than anyone on earth, Allan. And then—” she left the sentence trailing, almost despairingly.

Curtis moved to her side, placed his hand reassuringly on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry about anything more, Jo,” he said gently. “This will all be merely routine.” Again, on his face there was the momentary suggestion that he was deliberating if he should say anything further. And again, he seemed to decide against his emotion with his answer.

“Good night, Jo,” he said lamely. “Don’t worry. I wish you’d drop in here tomorrow morning after breakfast. I’m turning in for some rest now. This day has been much more full than I’d expected it to.”

Jo looked up at him, the perfume of her auburn hair coming suddenly to his nostrils. In her eyes there was bewilderment. On her lovely lips a halfformed question.

“Good night, Jo,” Curtis repeated.

Jo Matthew’s white young shoulders suddenly slumped.

“Good night, Allan,” she murmured. Only his eyes betraying the conflict of emotions within him, Curtis Allan watched the girl leave the stateroom. He sighed, then, and walking to the portholes, quietly shaded them. Then he removed his coat.

With a half smile of dry amusement at the fact that no one had bothered to search him before he was confined to the cabin stateroom, Curtis removed his shoulder holster, took the automatic pistol from its leather sheath, and carefully placed it under his pillow.

Then he continued disrobing...

It was almost noon of the following morning when Allan Curtis woke.

The sunlight streamed into his cabin stateroom, giving it a warm cheerfulness that for the first brief moments of waking awareness almost obliterated the danger he knew lay ahead.

Half an hour later, Curtis breakfasted, and after that talked once again to Jo Matthews. Later, at his own request, he had no more visitors in his “prison,” and spent the time until dinner perusing navigational volumes he found beside his berth.

Jo Matthews dined with him in his cabin, and their conversation was sparsely sprinkled through the course of the meal and the moments they spent together after that. On more than one occasion, sensing the mood of bewildered disappointment that had fallen over Jo, Curtis was forced to hold back any information he might have wanted to proffer.

And when Jo left that night, it was wordlessly, almost dejectedly. Curtis, however, shortly after her departure, stepped to the door of his cabin and had a brief, urgent conversation with the sailor who stood on guard outside.

It was the second such conversation that Curtis had had with the lean, clear-eyed sailor that day. They made certain they were not overheard, and were unobserved.

When darkness blanketed the skies and water that surrounded the ship, Curtis observed with satisfaction that this would be a moonless night. Then he retired, fully dressed, and slept three hours...

The hand and voice of the sailor who had been on guard outside his cabin, awakened Allan Curtis.

“It’s almost time,” the sailor declared in a voice reminiscent of Brooklyn. “We’re off the coastal regions already.”

Curtis opened his eyes, focusing them in the darkness of the cabin. Then he rose, making certain his automatic was still holstered at his shoulder.

“You have the Jacob’s ladder ready?” Curtis whispered.

The sailor nodded.

“All set. It will approach from starboard.”

“How about the watch?” Curtis demanded.

“Pheno-barbital in their coffees. Toured the watches. All sound asleep,” the sailor answered.

“Good,” Curtis said. “And the bridge?”

“First and third officers on duty. Helmsman too. They won’t catch the approach of the launch.”

Curtis moved toward the door. The sailor followed him. Out on the deserted deck, under the heavy blanket of the starless night, Curtis drew his automatic pistol. He turned to the sailor.

“Excellent work. I didn’t know you chaps were quite so efficient. Hope this doesn’t end your usefulness.”

The “sailor” grinned. “I’m due to be sent to the east coast to work pretty soon. The Chief’ll probably make my transfer after this.”

Curtis grinned back at him.

“You look nothing like an intelligence operative,” he observed.

“If I looked like one, I wouldn’t be a useful one for long,” the “sailor” smiled.

Curtis started along the darkened deck. At the railing, twenty feet later, he paused beside the shipboard end of a hemp ladder. It was knotted securely to a brace of rail davits.

Looking over the side, Curtis saw the length of the ladder trailing far down the steel sides of the vessel, almost to water edge.

“Long climb,” the “sailor” observed dryly.

Curtis nodded grimly, his eyes searching the darkened reaches of the waters out there.

“I think I hear them faintly,” he said.

The “sailor” stopped to listen. Then he nodded. “Keen ears, Curtis. That’s the launch.”

He pulled forth a tiny flashlight, and covering it with his hand, he flicked it on. A tiny pinpoint of light flickered several times as the “sailor” signaled. He stopped, waiting.

The faint muffled throb of a small motored boat was more audible now. And from the blackened reaches of the water off there, an answering pinpoint of light flashed twice.

“Everything ready,” said the “sailor.” He held out his hand. “The best of luck.”

Curtis smiled.

“Thanks, and to you, also.”

“I’ll head up to the bridge now to create your diversion,” the “sailor” said. “For God’s sake, make it speedy. I won’t be able to carry the bluff long.”

“I won’t,” Curtis promised. The “sailor” turned, disappearing up a companionway. Curtis watched until he was gone. Then he turned his gaze back out over the railing to that darkened stretch of water. He could tell, now, that the motor power of the launch-out there had been cut, and that the pilot was playing the skillful, though dangerous, game of drifting his tiny craft at angle to the huge ship’s forward motion.

Curtis could barely make out the outlines of the tiny motor launch on the moonless waters. It was a roofed cabin craft, no more than twenty feet long.

And suddenly Curtis heard the muffled exclamation behind him.

“Allan!”

Curtis wheeled, automatic in hand. He faced Jo Matthews!

Her eyes widened as she saw the gun in his hand, the rope ladder tied to the rail davits. Her lovely lips parted in fear.

“Allan,” she whispered huskily, “have you lost your mind? What are you doing?”

“Get back to your cabin, Jo, for God’s sakes,” Curtis whispered fiercely. “Quickly!”

“But, Allan,” Jo protested whitely, bewilderedly, “you mustn’t try to run from them. They’ll never implicate you in that murder. Don’t you see how foolish this is? Please, Allan, listen to—”

Curtis looked sharply over his shoulder and over the rail. The small launch was drifting to the side of the ship rapidly as the Ventura moved ahead through the tranquil waters.

He made his next decision in a split second, as swiftly as he realized there was no other alternative. He holstered his gun.

Stepping toward Jo with amazing alacrity, Curtis swept her up off her feet and into his arms. Then grabbing the davit lines for support, he swung up on the railing of the ship, teetering there for an instant, finding footing on the first rung of the hemp ladder which swung sickeningly down to the water below. He saw the tiny launch swinging closer now.

Precariously, then, Curtis started slowly down the swaying ladder of hemp. Dizzily bobbing at the bottom, far below, was the drifting motor launch.

Rung by rung, Curtis inched down the ladder, his body streaked with sweat, his arm cable-like around Jo Matthews.

And then, at last, he was at the bottom, while the wash from the prow of the ship frothed inches below his feet.

A grappling gaff, held in a sinewy black arm, extended from the launch and caught the hooks fast in the hemp ladder. Slowly, and with tremendous strength, the arm pulled the tiny craft in toward the ladder until it was at last only three scant feet away.

Curtis released his hold on the ladder, springing toward the bobbing deck of the small motor launch. He landed on his feet, Jo still in his arms.

A massive, powerfully-muscled negro stood there in the small roofed space of the launch deck, one hand on the helm, the other still clinging to the gaff hook. He smiled briefly, whitely, at Allan.

And then Allan let Jo gently down to the deck. Springing to the side of the gigantic negro, he grabbed the gaff hook, freed it from the hemp ladder, and fended the tiny launch away from the side of the huge steamer.

Under the expert hands of the negro, the motor of the launch snarled to life. Swiftly, he spun the wheel, turning the craft about. Then the motor launch, under full power, was surging away from the steamship.

Curtis turned to the huge negro, extending his hand.

“Well done, Juan,” he declared.

The giant negro, wearing only an oily pair of white sailor’s dungaree pants, cuff legs rolled slightly, revealing bare feet, grinned. He wore a gun and cartridge belt on his lean hips.

“Welcome back, Amigo Curtis. It been long time since I guide you.”

Jo Matthews had taken a place in the stern of the craft, her eyes filled with wonder as she gazed at Curtis and the negro. There was a curiously pleased, almost awe-inspired look in her eyes.

“Thanks, Juan,” Curtis said. Then, glancing about, he asked: “Where is the pilot of this launch, the little Scot, McAndrews?”

Juan shook his head. His expression was suddenly grim.

“He come in at beachhead, for pick up Juan. Then we to meet you. But my expedition party, twent’ boys, run into ambush there, just as launch come in. McAndrews among those dead.” Curtis cursed under his breath. “Ambush?” he asked. “Who ambushed your party?”

Juan shrugged.

“We no know. Not expect it. But see strange signs on way to jungle from Lima.”

“How many boys have you left for our trek?” Curtis asked.

“Four,” said Juan. “Five with me.” Again Curtis cursed, desperately. “And McAndrews, too,” he muttered savagely. He turned and went back to the stern where Jo sat silently.

“I had intended originally to keep you out of this mess, Jo,” he said. “You were just a front, to make my so-called expedition look more realistic. I was to meet this boat no matter what happened aboard the Ventura. I never intended to dock at port. But at least I’d thought you’d be safe.”

Jo started to speak, but Curtis cut her off.

“Even a few minutes ago, when you blundered on me making my exit over the rail, I had no choice but to take you along to keep you from delaying me and possibly unwittingly spreading an alarm. But I’d thought that the pilot of this launch, a McAndrews, would take you back to Lima once he’d landed me on the beachhead. I figured poorly, Jo. McAndrews has been killed. There’ll be no one to take this launch back to Lima. We’ll have to scuttle it.” He paused gravely. “I don’t know what I’ll have to do with you.”

“You haven’t told me what this is about, Allan,” Jo said quietly. “But I won’t stand in your way. Do as you please. I... I’m sorry I had to... to interfere as much as I must have. Can’t I make it back to Lima alone?” Curtis laughed humorlessly. “Through countless miles of trackless jungle?” He shook his head. “Natives could hardly make it afoot, let alone a white girl unaided.”

“I’m sorry Allan,” Jo said softly. “Forget it,” Curtis said briefly. Then he turned away to rejoin Juan at the helm. Over his shoulder, he paused to say, “I’ll think of something, some way. I have to.”

“We no go back to beachhead,” Juan said to Curtis. “Ambush party maybe there yet. Me leave four boys in cove, two mile up coast. We took cover in cove. Then I took boat, met you like plan.”

Curtis nodded grimly.

“Thank God we’ve still four of them left, at any rate,” he said. “How long did it take you to reach the beachhead from Lima?”

“Four day,” Juan said proudly. “Travel like los diablos.”

Curtis fished for a cigarette, eyes grimly knifing the darkness at the approaching jungle coastline. A verdant, tropical smell was already in the warm sea air...

Chapter VII

A Jungle Trap

The motor faded away into silence as the launch coasted into a narrow, small-beached cove. Ahead of them, the shore line was an uninviting bulk in the deep blackness of the night. Except for the occasional, marrow-chilling scream of a soaring bird, not a sound welcomed their arrival.

When the bottom of the boat scraped against the sandy beach. Curtis jumped ashore and fastened the painter line to the bole of a tree.

Sloshing back through the warm, gently swelling water, he held out his arms for Jo.

“Come on, Kid,” he said. “You’re in for a tough enough time as it is, without starting things off thoroughly soaked.”

“All right,” Jo said meekly.

Curtis put one arm around her waist and lifted her over the gunwale of the boat and carried her ashore. Juan splashed after them.

Curtis set Jo down and turned to Juan.

“How many of the expedition did you say escaped with you?” he asked.

“Four, Amigo,” Juan answered. “They are very much afraid. Now they are hiding in the bush.”

“Get them,” Curtis ordered. “We’ve got to get moving as soon as possible.” Juan nodded and moved off, his oily dungarees a white blur in the darkness. Soon he disappeared into the forebodingly dark bush that grew in a tangled mass up to the beach.

“Allan,” Jo said in a small voice, “I know now I haven’t been much help to you. I still don’t understand what’s going on, but I realize I’ve been completely blind in judging you. You’re not at all the person I thought you were and I’m — I’m glad.”

“Thanks for the endorsement,” Curtis said. “But this is a mighty tough spot I’ve landed you in. I can’t send you back to Lima now because my pilot, McAndrews, is dead. You’ve got to stick with me, and the things I’m heading for aren’t exactly pleasant. Are you game?”

“I’ll go anywhere with you, Allan,” Jo said instantly, “but the suspense is absolutely killing me. Isn’t there anything you can tell me that will set my female curiosity at ease?”

“Not a great deal,” Curtis said. “I’m here because I know this country, as you once pointed out, like my own backyard. The government sent me here to do a very special job, but I can’t give you any of the details. If we find what I’m looking for, you’ll know the whole story immediately. That enough?”

Jo’s eyes were shining in the darkness.

“That’s perfect, Allan. I know that what you’re doing is necessary and important and I know you can do the job better than any man in the world.”

“That’s a large statement,” Curtis said. “Especially when you don’t know how tough this job is liable to be. I don’t mind for myself, but I feel guilty about dragging you into this hell-hole of danger. We’ve got a long trek ahead of us and there are some very nasty obstacles in the way of our objective. Then there’s the highly important problem of getting back alive. I’m not trying to scare you, but I’d feel a little better knowing that you’re going into this thing with your eyes open.”

Jo looked at him steadily.

“I’m seeing things more clearly than I ever remember,” she said softly.

Juan returned then driving four small, wizened, dark natives ahead of him. The four men were completely terrified.

Curtis saw the rolling whites of their eyes, the desperate glances they flung about, and he knew that they were not likely to prove of much use.

“What’s the matter with them?” he demanded of Juan.

Juan shrugged his massive shoulders. The glance he directed at the four cringing natives was full of scorn.

“Amigo,” he said, “they are from the bush and they are very much afraid. They do not want to go into the jungle and if they don’t, I break their heads open like a rotten fruit.”

Curtis looked from the terrified natives to Juan.

“I told you to get men who weren’t afraid of bullets,” he said sharply. “If a few rifle volleys did this to them, how do you think they’d react if they ran into a machine gun?”

“It is not the bullets,” Juan said quickly. “Those they do not mind.”

“Then what’s the matter?” Curtis demanded.

“It is the foolish old men’s tales they have been listening to,” Juan said with great indignation. “I have told them it is only the nonsense, but they will not listen. I knock them to the ground, but it does not help. They are still afraid of the snake god, Sacha, and her daughter. It is much foolishness.”

Curtis sighed in despairing. The four natives had crouched close to the ground when Juan had mentioned the word, “Sacha,” and their terrified moans sounded like the wind in the tree tops.

“Allan,” Jo whispered, “what’s it all about?”

Curtis looked disgustedly at the frightened natives.

“A lot of superstitious stupidity,” he said savagely. “I’ve heard a thousand variations of the snake god legend, none of which make sense. These are the first natives I’ve ever encountered who paid any attention to the story. It seems there’s supposed to be a huge snake in the Peruvian jungles who rescued the people from the Spaniards centuries ago. The natives call the snake Sacha. There’s another part of the legend that gives Sacha a daughter, a girl who rides the beast and answers the entreaty of her countrymen who are in need. It’s been years since I’ve even heard a mention of the silly story. Who’s been pouring tales into their ears, Juan?”

“No one, amigo,” Juan answered. “They are big fools all by themselves. Not far from here they have seen the tracks of the snake god and they are afraid.”

“The tracks of the snake god!” Curtis repeated sharply. “What are you talking about, Juan? Do you believe in this story?”

“Me?” Juan said indignantly. “Very much not. But Juan has seen the tracks also.”

“So you’ve seen the tracks,” Curtis said grimly. “Where?”

“Deep in the jungle. For many miles the tracks twist and turn through the jungle. Trees are knocked down, bushes are torn up by the roots. The tracks you cannot miss. It is all very foolish,” Juan finished somewhat uneasily.

“Tracks or not,” Curtis said, “we head into the jungle at sun-up. Now try and talk some sense into your boys.”

In the pale light of breaking dawn the results of Juan’s efforts were apparent. The four natives had disappeared completely.

Juan roved up and down the shore line seeking their trail, but it was hopeless search. He came back to Curtis shaking his big head like an angry dog.

“When I find them,” he said wrathfully, “I break their afraid heads in my hands like a twig.”

“We’ll be better off without them,” Curtis said. “Get the gear from the launch. We’re ready to go.”

Juan passed the knapsacks of provisions from the compartments of the launch to Curtis who carried them to the beach. When the supplies were removed, Juan asked:

“What we do with the boat?”

“Scuttle it,” Curtis said. “Jerk the stops before you leave. If someone stumbled on it here it’d be like an arrow pointing to the path we took.”

In twenty minutes the small launch had drifted from the cove and was settling. Curtis and Juan slung heavy packs to their shoulders and, with Jo in the middle, they filed into the dark jungle.

They trudged through the thick bush, Juan in the lead, hacking at the clinging trailers, until the sun had moved high in the heavens.

It was during their first rest halt that they heard the airplane.

The noise of its motor was like the droning of a giant fly high in the heavens. Curtis shaded his eyes with his hand and searched the sky until he located the plane, a gleaming white speck against the white backdrop of a cloud.

Flying high, it swung over them in several long crisscrosses before it finally disappeared into the sun.

Curtis glanced briefly at Juan.

“We’d better be moving,” he said.

Jo stood up quickly.

“I’m ready,” she announced.

Her dress was torn in several places and smudges of dust streaked her cheeks, but her smile was bright.

“Good kid,” Curtis said.

Again they marched on. That afternoon two more planes flew over them at an altitude of only a few hundred feet.

Curtis followed their flight with his eyes, a worried line furrowing his forehead.

“Allan,” Jo asked suddenly. “What planes are those?”

“Can’t tell,” Curtis answered. “Their insignia has been painted over. Let’s keep moving.”

In another hour they came to a fork in the narrow trail and Juan cried suddenly:

“See, amigo! Ahead of us is the track of the snake god. Where the trees are knocked aside and the bush tom up is the track of Sacha.”

The face of the big black native oddly strained and his hand was clenched around the butt of his hip-holstered automatic. With his other hand he pointed, half-fearfully, half-triumphantly, down the trail.

Without speaking Curtis moved down the trail toward the section of the jungle that had been ripped apart, as if by the passing of a giant monster.

Curtis studied the shattered trees and crushed underbrush carefully. The swath cut across the trail they were following at right angles, and wound away into the dense fastness of the jungle.

Something had passed here, knocking trees aside and tearing up the matted jungle floor — but it hadn’t been a mythical snake god!

Curtis’ eyes narrowed and a worried frown tugged at his lips.

Juan was looking uneasily at the sundered jungle path.

“You see,” he said, “it is as I have said.”

“Have you seen many of these tracks?” Curtis asked.

“Very many,” Juan answered. “All through the jungle. Sacha is everywhere.”

Curtis smiled tightly.

“Don’t blame this on your snake god, Juan. These tracks were made by armored tanks.”

“Tanks?” Jo said incredulously, “are you sure, Allan?”

“Certainly. It’s as plain as the nose on Juan’s face. Look at the way the bark has been scraped clean from the trees. And look at the imprint of the treads on the ground. These tracks were made by tanks, about twenty-five tonners, I’d guess.”

Juan looked dubiously at the tracks, but there was an expression of relief in his eyes.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “It is so easy to see.”

“Then let’s be moving,” Curtis said. “We’ve got a long trek ahead of us.”

They continued on until the swiftly falling jungle night made further travel impossible. Then they made a swift camp, ate their frugal rations and turned in.

In the morning before the first slanting lances of the sun cut through the dusky dawn, they were on their way again, driving deeper and deeper into the mysterious, foreboding fastness of the tangled jungle.

Again they heard the distant droning of planes and soon they could see four slim fighters lazily circling overhead. As they watched, one of the planes banked slowly and started down in a long glide. At a hundred feet the plane pulled out of the dive and flashed over them, so close that they could see details of the camouflaged fuselage.

The three remaining planes banked and dove after the leader. Curtis swore softly.

It was impossible to tell whether they had been seen. The leafy roof of the tall jungle shrouded the trail completely, and at the speed the planes were traveling it would have been nearly impossible for their pilots to see the trail or the small party.

Still—

Watching with narrowed eyes Curtis saw the planes pull out of their steep dives and climb again into the sky. The wings of the leader plane waggled slowly and the small formation banked and thundered away.

“What does it mean?” Jo asked worriedly. “It seems almost like they’re looking for us.”

Curtis swung his pack to his shoulder without answering.

“Let’s go,” he said.

In silence the small party continued their march. Throughout the rest of the morning the sky was empty of planes, but after their brief stop for lunch, they saw one single plane, flying thousands of feet above them, heading west.

Curtis studied the terrain over which they passed carefully now. A queer uneasiness disturbed him, as his eyes probed the still, silent forests.

Juan noticed something too, for his glance swung restlessly from side to side.

The deep depths of the jungle were quiet now, as the small party fought their way along the ever-narrowing trail. Ahead of them the path they were following converged with another trail that branched off at right angles.

Juan, in the lead, hacked savagely at the trailing creepers and the thick underbrush that tore at their clothing.

“How much longer?” Jo panted. “I feel like I’ve been walking for ages.”

“Keep your chin up for a while longer,” Curtis said.

When they reached the right-angling branch of the trail, Curtis stopped and looked about. The convergence of the two trails formed a small natural clearing about fifty yards in diameter.

Here Curtis stopped.

“We’re rather close to our objective,” he said, “so we can rest here for a while.”

They moved ahead to the center of the clearing. Curtis felt the peculiar prickling premonition again, as he unslung his pack and dropped it to the ground.

Nervously he glanced about the clearing. It was late afternoon and the shadows of the dense trees threw flickering areas of darkness over the shrublike bushes. Everything was quiet.

He noticed for the first time then that the shrill, almost incessant screams of the birds had ceased, and that the silence that had settled over the jungle was frighteningly unnatural.

His hand dropped instinctively to his gun.

“Juan,” he said softly, “I think we had better start back. I don’t like the looks of things.”

“Allan,” Jo said anxiously, “what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said, in a low voice, “but I think I’ve found out all I need to know. We haven’t any time to waste. Hurry!”

He was bending down for his pack, when he heard the sudden cracking, rustling noise in the bushes.

On one knee, he froze. His eyes flicked swiftly about the circle formed by the clearing, and he drew his gun slowly.

Suddenly through the dark depths of the underbrush he saw the flash of metal, and the vague shadows of moving shapes.

Jo crouched close to him, and he put his free arm about her shoulders.

“Don’t be afraid, Honey,” he whispered.

He raised his gun and backed carefully toward the narrow trail that had led them to this clearing.

Juan was at his side, crouched low, his big hand closed over his gun.

“Don’t be fools!” a harsh voice behind them said suddenly. “You are covered from every side.”

At the sound of the strident, commanding voice, there was a sudden threshing sound from the underbrush that circled the clearing, and from the tangled depths of the jungles a dozen uniformed soldiers suddenly emerged, their rifles pointed unwaveringly at them.

“Be sensible,” the harsh voice continued. “Throw your weapons into the center of the clearing. If you delay I will order my men to fire.”

Curtis felt Jo trembling in his arms.

“Chin up,” he said.

His eyes swung over the semi-circle of tough, hard-bitten soldiers who covered them so completely with their weapons. Resistance was not only futile, it was impossible. The soldiers were obviously Nazi, and they looked anxious to use the rifles they held so grimly in their hands.

“Throw down your weapons!” the harsh voice snapped. “I give you but one more chance.”

Slowly Curtis lowered his gun and tossed it into the center of the clearing.

“Drop your gun, Juan,” he told the big native.

With a contemptuous flip Juan tossed the gun after Curtis’.

“I do not need the gun,” he said grimly. “If I get these hands of mine on their necks.”

Curtis stood motionless as a slim, arrogant German officer stepped around him and regarded him with mocking eyes.

“May I ask the meaning of this attack?” Curtis said calmly. “We are a legally licensed archeological expedition and as such, have the right to explore this territory.”

“Have you?” the German officer said coldly.

He waved his hand and a tall thickset blond fellow stepped from a place of concealment in the tangled shrubbery, and advanced.

Curtis stiffened slightly.

This man’s eyes raked mockingly over Curtis and Jo, before he turned to the German officer.

“This is the man,” he said. “I do not know about the girl. She traveled as his secretary.”

“Good,” the officer snapped. “So?” he wheeled to Curtis, “It is just an exploring expedition, is it?”

The heavy-set blond with the soft amused blue eyes checked the officer with an upraised hand.

“I will handle this, Captain Brach. I believe that Mr. Curtiss will more fully appreciate the situation if I explain it to him. After all we both speak the same language. We can speak as one foreign agent to another, can we not, Mr. Curtiss?”

Curtis regarded the man thoughtfully. This man, he knew, was the same whom he had seen on board the Ventura, in company with the mysteriously beautiful woman.

“Permit me to introduce myself,” the German agent said politely. “I am Kurt von Wessel. My job was to prevent your arriving here, Mr. Curtis. Happily, I have succeeded, though you did manage to give me the slip from the Ventura. That was very clever of you, I must say.”

“Thank you,” Curtis said quietly. “I imagine it was especially annoying after you had gone to the trouble of murdering Carlos Benevedas and implicating me as the guilty party. That was to give you time to slip away from me at Lima, was it not?”

“Yes,” von Wessel admitted, smiling. “I didn’t think that you were planning to jump ship so unobtrusively. You forced me to alter my plans a bit. I was forced to fly here and warn the garrison of your whereabouts. Our planes located your party early this morning. Since then we have been expecting you quite patiently.”

Curtis shrugged wearily.

“Since you’ve won the little game we were playing, would it hurt to tell me just what the whole program is? After all, I don’t imagine I’ll be taking the information back with me.”

“No,” von Wessel smiled, “you won’t be taking anything back with you. There is no harm in telling you that for several months Germany has been infiltrating troops into this country. We have the nucleus of a complete armored division gathered here in the abandoned ruins of an ancient Incan city. At the proper moment these forces, together with a band of Peruvian renegades, will strike at the capital of the country, Lima. Imagine, if you can, the effect on Hemispheric Solidarity, when the government of Peru is controlled from Berlin.”

“Very neat,” Curtis said grimly. “It was what the American state department feared.”

Captain Brach stepped forward.

“We must return to our encampment,” he said. “If you are through with the prisoners, Herr von Wessel, I will have them escorted to their cells.” Von Wessel smiled coldly.

“I am through with them,” he said softly.

Chapter VIII

Maria Again

The improvised cell to which Curtis, Jo, and the massive Juan were taken, was little more than a small, dank cave, situated in what had once been the heart of the ancient Inca city.

Through a small square aperture in the ceiling, and a similar foot-square slot in the right wall, a scant supply of sticky tropical air was admitted.

The only entrance and exit to the narrow little cave was covered by a thick-slabbed stone door, which the uniformed soldiers of Captain Brach slid into place.

Then the three heard the footsteps outside moving away until there was no more sound.

In the murky darkness of the cave, Curtis struck a match. Then, holding it aloft, he moved slowly about their confinement. His sharp exclamation was punctuated by sudden darkness as the match flickered out.

“It’s all right,” his voice came through the darkness to Jo and Juan. “I’ve found an old candle stub in a wall niche here.”

There was the scraping of another match. Then illumination. Curtis lighted the candle, which sputtered at first, then flamed to a steady glow that drove the darkness from all save the smallest corners of the tiny cave.

“Not exactly what Edison had in mind when he first began puttering around,” Curtis observed, “but it’s something.”

Juan was busy at the stone door that barred their exit, his huge muscles knotting as he searched for leverage on its worn surface.

Jo crossed to Curtis.

“It’s just about all over, isn’t it, Allan?” she asked softly. There was no trace of fear in her voice.

Curtis shook his head.

“Perhaps,” he admitted, “but it won’t actually be over until we admit we’re licked. I’m not conceding anything yet.”

“This ancient Inca city, Allan,” Jo asked, “have you been here before?” Curtis shook his head.

“I’ve been in this territory, Jo, but never found the city until now. Several expeditions had tried to find it, unsuccessfully, of course. A few of us knew it was here. In the ancient Inca civilization this was called Sacha.”

“And that’s the basis of the snake god legend?” Jo asked.

Curtis nodded.

“Part of it. The queen who ruled this city was supposed to have escaped with the great snake Sacha when it was sacked and razed by a maurading band of conquistadors. The snake and the queen were supposed to have taken refuge in the jungles, returning to dwell alone in the city after the Spaniards had left it in ruins.”

Jo shuddered.

“Well, you’ve found it full of minor snakes now,” she observed.

Curtis nodded soberly.

“And somehow, Jo, these snakes have to be crushed before they have a chance to touch off the revolt that will crush all South America under the coils of the Axis.”

Juan came back from the door. His black brow was shiny with sweat. He shook his head.

“The door no move, amigo,” he declared.

Curtis shook his head.

“I didn’t think it would. It probably can only be opened from the other side. Undoubtedly it operates on Inca lever theory. Clever people, those ancients.”

Juan looked patiently at Curtis. There was complete faith in his expression, as though he were certain his amigo would inevitably bring forth a solution to their troubles.

Curtis interpreted this glance for what it was. He smiled ruefully.

“No ideas as yet, Juan. We’re in a tight one, this time.”

Juan grinned confidently, shrugged, and went over into a corner where he sat down on the dank stones of the floor.

“Juan has the right idea,” Curtis said to Joe. “Standing up, pacing back and forth, will only wear us out. Let’s relax. We’ll need all our strength.”

He moved over to the side of the wall and sat down, leaning his back against the stones. Jo sat down beside him.

“You can tell me, Allan,” Jo said.

“Eh?” Curtis looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“We aren’t being held here as prisoners, Allan. I know that much,” Jo answered. “We’ve just been sealed in here to be left to die. An easy method of eliminating us. Isn’t that so?”

Curtis was silent, and when he finally answered his voice was husky.

“You’re a stout fella, Jo. And discerning.”

“I’m not afraid, Allan,” Jo whispered. “I’d always kind of hoped that we’d live to be a ripe old age tog—” She suddenly broke off, flushing.

“Together, Jo?” Allan asked. “Is that what you were going to say?”

Jo didn’t look at him. She nodded her head quietly.

Allan Curtis found her hand, and covered it with his own.

“Maybe we will, kid,” he said huskily. “Maybe we will at that.”

Jo didn’t answer. But the look in her lovely eyes was answer enough. She moved closer to Curtis, until her auburn head touched his shoulder.

Dawn was rising in the jungle. The faint gray light of it poured through the two tiny apertures in the cell. Curtis rose and moved to the candle in the wall niche, snuffing it out with thumb and forefinger, then came back to take his place beside Jo.

In his corner, Juan dozed, his magnificently handsome head slumped forward on his cable-muscled arms.

Quite suddenly, Jo turned to Curtis.

“Allan,” she whispered sharply. Her hand was on his arm, her head tilted to the side.

Curtis frowned.

“What’s up?”

“Listen,” Jo entreated.

In the silence, Allan Curtis suddenly heard the faintly scraping sounds outside the barred doorway. They were growing more audible with every moment.

“Footsteps,” Allan whispered. “Someone’s coming!”

The footsteps were definitely louder now.

“Von Wessel, or Captain Barch,” Jo hazarded.

Curtis, swiftly on his feet, shook his head.

“Those are a woman’s steps,” he whispered.

Curtis moved to the small aperture in the wall, peering out. He turned back to face Jo, his expression one of mixed emotions.

“Von Wessel’s accomplice, the girl, Maria,” he declared. “She’s coming here!”

Jo scrambled hastily to her feet, eyes alight with hope and excitement.

“I had no idea she was here,” Jo began.

Curtis cut her off.

“Neither did I.” He placed his finger to his lips. Then he stepped back to the small aperture. Jo moved up beside him.

“She’s frightened, looking wildly around as she walks,” Curtis reported. “Cross your fingers, kid. Something is in the air.”

Then Curtis stepped back from the wall opening. He stepped to the stone door, placing his ear against it.

“She’s experimenting with the mechanism,” he whispered excitedly. “She’s going to open this!”

Juan opened his eyes, caught the situation at a glance, and rose to stand beside Curtis and Jo at the door. There was the sudden scraping of stone against stone, then the door began to swing outward!

Curtis pulled Joe back to one side with him. Juan stepped swiftly back to the other side. And then gray light streamed into the cave, and Maria von Wessel stepped inside.

Juan grabbed one of her arms, Curtis the other. Juan had a hand across her mouth. She didn’t struggle. Her cold-blue eyes flicked from Juan to Curtis, to Jo, trying to convey a message.

At Curtis’ command, Juan removed his hand from her mouth.

“I’m here to help you,” Maria von Wessel said swiftly, urgently. “Please release me. I am unarmed. I would not have come here this way had I meant harm to you.”

For an instant Curtis hesitated, then he released the blonde girl, signaling Juan to do the same.

“All right,” Curtis demanded, “what’s this all about?”

Maria von Wessel’s shapely body was trembling visibly. There was no mistaking the strain she was under. When she spoke, her sensuous red underlip quivered.

“Kurt von Wessel brought me here with him to kill me. He figured it would be much more easily accomplished in, the jungle. He was acting on orders from our High Command, which considered my usefulness to the fatherland at an end. Kurt didn’t tell me. Three hours ago, unable to sleep, I rose and started from my tent. I overheard Kurt instructing the captain to have one of his soldiers put a bullet through my skull within the next ten hours.” Looking carefully at the girl, Curtis knew instantly that she spoke the truth.

“I went back to my tent,” Maria von Wessel continued, her voice strained. “I could not sleep. I racked my brain for means of escape. I realized the futility of any attempt on my own to escape through these horrible jungles. At last I realized that only through you people could I bargain for my life.” Maria von Wessel shuddered visibly. “I have freed you,” she said. “I beg of you, now, to take me with you in your flight.”

Curtis hesitated for but an instant.

“Very well,” he said, “the bargain is made. But I can’t promise you anything after we reach Lima.”

“I am asking only safe guidance through the jungles,” Maria von Wessel answered.

“There are no sentries out there?” Curtis demanded, indicating the courtyard that lay some eighty yards from the cave entrance.

Maria shook her head.

“There was no need for posting them,” she said. “The entire group still sleeps.”

“You know where we can obtain supplies?” Curtis asked. “We’ll need guns, food.”

Maria nodded, her blonde hair shimmering in the growing dawn.

“Yes. But we will have to be swift. Follow me.”

Juan moved beside Maria, and Curtis walked with Jo as they started cautiously down the slope from the cave that led to the crumbling ruins below them.

Less than a minute later, the four were moving through the crumbling, weed-tangled ruins of the courtyard. Decaying, vine-webbed walls of ancient stone encircled them on all four sides. And against one of these walls, on the far end of the courtyard, there were six or eight tents pitched.

Beyond the walls, and in the outskirts of the ancient city, Curtis knew, were the rest of the German troops. Their tanks, perhaps from twelve to fifteen of them, and armored motorized equipment had also been stationed out there. Against the wall to their left was a tall stone platform, similar to an altar. A series of steps, twenty or thirty, led up to that crumbling edifice.

They were halfway across the courtyard, when Maria paused.

“One of those tents contains officers’ supplies,” she whispered. “Food and guns and ammunition you will find in there. We must not all advance at once. They might be roused. Kurt, the captain, and several lieutenants are in those other tents.”

Juan turned to Curtis.

“I go, amigo. I move as silent as the cat.”

Curtis debated this an instant.

“Guns first, Juan. Then we’ll be able to cover any possible awakening on the Hun’s part.”

Juan nodded, starting off with incredibly swift stealth. They watched him moving noiselessly, running lightly, toward the tent Maria had indicated as containing supplies. Juan moved not the tiniest pebble in his approach. Then they saw him cautiously entering the supply tent. He reappeared moments later, his arms stacked with three revolvers, a submachine gun, and boxes of cartridge rounds. Then he was back at their side, breathing easily, grinning broadly.

Curtis swiftly strapped one of the revolvers to his side, holstering it on a cartridge belt. He gave the other to Jo, while Juan donned the third.

Then Curtis took the submachine gun, and nodding to Juan, said:

“Now for the food we’ll need.”

Jo and Maria remained behind, this time, while Curtis, four steps behind the swiftly moving Juan, backed the giant negro’s advance with the protection of the submachine gun.

Curtis took a position some ten yards before the line of tents, holding the tommy gun in sweeping command of the scene. Juan reentered the supply tent. When he emerged, moments later, laden with four small crates.

“Concentrates,” Curtis observed, as Juan came up to him. “Splendid. They won’t take room, and will provide all the nourishment we’ll need.”

Curtis took two of the oblong crates under one arm.

“Give the other two to Jo until we reach the outside of these walls safely,” he ordered Juan. “I’ll remain here and keep the tents covered. Go with the senoritas as far as the wall. See they are covered well, then return.”

Juan started off toward Jo and Maria. From the corner of his eye, Curtis saw Juan escorting the two women toward the wall gate. And then Curtis heard the shot ring out, felt the stinging flash of pain in the soft flesh of his shoulder, and saw Kurt von Wessel, smoking automatic in hand, moving from the farthest tent toward him.

And even as Curtis realized he was hit, even as he dropped to one knee and trained the submachine gun on Kurt von Wessel, he realized that this shot had spelled their doom. The camp would come alive, and it would be impossible to escape from the walled courtyard.

Then the tommy gun was rattling in Curtis’ arms, spitting flame and death at the figure of Kurt von Wessel.

The Nazi agent had time to fire twice more before the flame from the tommy gun cut him down. Curtis felt the spat of stone flicking at his feet, and thanked God that von Wessel’s last shots had missed.

Kurt von Wessel was sprawled face forward in the dust. But in seconds later, Curtis knew, the occupants of the other tents would be spewing forth, weapons in hand. He rose, wheeling, to see Juan, already aware of what had happened, dashing with Jo and Maria away from the wall gate and toward the tall stone platform at the other side of the courtyard.

Mentally Curtis thanked God for Juan’s presence of mind. The massive negro had known, the instant Kurt von Wessel’s shots rang out, that it would be suicidal to attempt an exit through the wall gate. He had immediately sized up the situation and decided swiftly that the only vantage point in the courtyard would be that stone platform. There were buttresses along its edge that would be protection.

Curtis set out across the courtyard toward the same objective as Juan, Jo, and Maria dashed for. He’d traveled less than a hundred yards when the first shots sounded behind him.

He wheeled, then, dropping to his knees, training the tommy gun on figures of German officers emerging from the tent line. His fire caught two of them instantly, and sent the third to cover.

Then Curtis was on his feet again, dashing once more toward the high stone platform against that far wall.

And now two soldiers dashed through the wall gate, rifles in hand. They sighted Juan and the two girls instantly. And even as they raised their rifles to their shoulders, Juan turned, stopped, and whipped out his revolver.

The huge negro dropped to one knee, steadying his aim, and with incredible nerve drew careful bead. He dropped the first of the soldiers with his first shot.

But the second German had fired, now. And Curtis saw Maria sprawl headlong as his rifle barked. She didn’t move, even though Jo had stopped and was trying to help her to rise.

Then Juan’s second shot dropped the second rifleman before he could fire again. Juan was on his feet then, dashing to where Jo bent over Maria. He paused an instant, then grabbed Jo’s arm and hurried her up to the first of the stone platform steps.

Curtis turned again now, sweeping his tommy gun back and forth to cover Jo and Juan’s ascent to the platform. He moved backward as rapidly as he could, finally gaining the first steps himself. Then he turned and dashed up the crumbling flagstones.

Jo and Juan had gained the stone platform, and were covering his ascent. And then Curtis was beside them, helping Juan drag a tripod-mounted machine gun from its position overlooking the other side of the wall. They speedily turned the gun about, so that now it covered the courtyard.

“They must have had this posted to cover any outside approach,” Curtis grunted thankfully, as they tugged the gun into position. He found a crate with sufficient ammunition rounds, then.

Jo, revolver almost concealing the tiny hand in which she held it, looked grimly beautiful, and deadly determined.

“Maria caught the shot in the back,” she said briefly. “It went through her heart.”

Curtis was breathing more easily for the moment. They were now in a position that would be costly to attack. The buttressing of the stone boulders on the platform’s edge gave them protection enough, with luck. And Juan, behind the machine gun, was a coolly efficient marksman.

“Get into concealment,” Curtis ordered Jo. She took a position behind a boulder three times her size.

And then, through the wall gate to their right, more than a dozen German soldiers swarmed.

Grinning at the opportunity, Juan swung the machine gun muzzle on them. And as Curtis dropped beside him to feed the belt through the gun, Juan opened fire.

The attackers wilted under the deadly chatter of the gun, sprawling backward as the bullets scythed through their numbers like a harvester through wheat. Only three lived to flee back through the gate entrance.

“Nice work,” Curtis commended.

Juan grinned. He was a first class fighting man in paradise.

“Thank you, amigo,” he said.

Moments passed, while outside the wall gate there was the sound of voices raised excitedly. But no one reappeared in the courtyard. The moments crawled into fifteen, then thirty minutes.

“Wonder what they’re up to?” Jo asked quietly.

And then, through the wall gate and out into the courtyard toward them, strode the slim, uniformed arrogant figure of the German captain, Brach. He held one hand aloft, with a white handkerchief in it.

“Keep a bead on him, Juan,” Curtis ordered. Then he rose into view behind his boulder.

Captain Brach halted some fifty yards away from their position.

“Curtis,” he shouted, “do not be a fool. You cannot hold that position more than a few hours, even though it be momentarily advantageous. I guarantee the safety of the girl if you surrender instantly.”

Curtis looked grimly to Jo. She grinned.

“I don’t believe the liar,” Jo said coolly.

“Start running, Brach!” Curtis shouted. “You’ll take this position, undoubtedly, but you’ll pay the price it’ll cost.”

“Curtis,” Brach snapped, “you are a fool. Consider. The gir—”

“Make him dance,” Curtis ordered Juan.

The machine gun chattered briefly. Almost at Brach’s feet, bullets kicked up dust. The arrogant little captain retreated in undignified haste.

Juan, grin wide on his ebon features, opened fire again, following the racing little captain from a distance of four feet with bullets. He broke into laughter as Brach scurried through the wall gate.

Curtis smiled grimly.

“They’ll be back,” he promised. “Plenty soon, and with plenty of trouble.”

And then, as if to confirm his words, they heard the sudden thrumming of motors snarling to life. Juan looked up, the smile gone from his face.

“That noise, amigo, come from many tanks!”

Curtis picked up the submachine gun he’d discarded when he’d started feeding ammunition to Juan’s larger gun. His lips were tight...

Chapter IX

A Panzer Attack!

Jo was suddenly beside Allan, then, her hand lightly on his arm, her eyes answering his own swift glance with equal fearless resolution.

“They’re coming this time meaning business,” Allan said tautly. “Our argument with a brace of tanks can’t be more than a short one, a very short one, Jo.”

The sound of the tank motors was steady and menacing, now. It seemed, moments later, as if they were moving into action, approaching the wall gate down the courtyard.

Juan’s grin was unflinching.

“Must shoot plenty damn sharp now, eh amigo?” he grunted.

Curtis nodded.

“And sharper still, Juan. Unfortunately we’ve nothing even looking like an anti-tank gun here on the platform.

We’ll have to make the best of a very bad bargain.”

Jo’s sharp exclamation of discovery knifed the air, even before Curtis had finished speaking.

“Allan, look!” Jo was pointing to a hitherto unnoticed concealment under one of the boulder buttresses.

Following her pointing finger, Curtis saw a small crate concealed there under the rock. He stepped swiftly over to it, dragging the crate forth.

His own exclamation was one of rekindled hope.

“Good God, luck is still with us.” He rose, pointing down at the crate. “Grenades, a dozen of them. The old potato masher style. They aren’t the same as anti-tank guns, but they’ll be more than what we have!”

“Madre de Dios!” Juan said softly. “It is fate!”

And suddenly the thundering of the tank motors came to them with definitely increased vibration.[6]

Curtis dragged the crate swiftly behind their boulder buttresses, and picked up his submachine gun once again. Jo returned to her place of safety, at Curtis’ urgent signal to do so.

And then the first of the tanks nosed through the wall gate into the courtyard, and rumbling directly behind it in a single file formation followed three more!

“Brach is taking no chances,” Curtis said bitterly. “A tank for each of us and one to spare!”

The four tanks were of the light panzer action type, Curtis saw, that had been used so successfully in action against France and in Poland.

Now they continued single file, straight across the courtyard at right angles to the platform, until all four were inside the courtyard.

“Ready!” Curtis said grimly.

An instant later, the tanks all wheeled sharply, swinging directly toward the platform, lined four across, and started bearing toward them.

“Give it sharply, Juan!” Curtis shouted.

Juan’s gun chattered to life, sweeping a hail of fire against the steel sheaths that covered their approaching enemy. It was impossible to tell if any of his fire was penetrating the chinks and apertures through which the tank guns peered. They kept coming forward.

“They’re not wasting fire until they get closer,” Curtis declared. “Which is just what I’d hoped for!”

Curtis bent swiftly, brought forth a grenade from the crate. He pulled the pin, counted briefly, and then hurled it out from the platform at the approaching line of tanks.

It exploded squarely between the center pair of tanks, which had been less than five feet apart from one another. The tank on the right of the center was knocked up and over on its side, while the one on the left center was blasted completely around by the force of the explosion until it was facing in the opposite direction.

But the tanks on each extreme end were both still coming doggedly down on them now, and suddenly there was a sharp exclamation of elation from Juan.

Curtis wheeled to see the tank on the left end of the line veered wildly off at a sharp right angle. One of Juan’s machine gun bursts had penetrated a chink and caught the driver!

And then Curtis had the second grenade in his hand, and Juan had left the machine gun to get a grenade himself. Both pulled pins at the same time, and both hurled their grenades with grim accuracy at the remaining tank that still bore down on them from the right.

Juan’s grenade caught the tank flush on the tower, and Allan’s hit directly below the stomach of the metal monster. With tremendous force they exploded simultaneously.

And when the haze and smoke and dust had cleared, the tank lay completely over on its back, tractors still moving, like some gigantic beetle!

But the left center tank, the one that had been knocked around in the opposite direction by the explosive force of Allan’s first grenade, was now turned about and starting toward them again!

And as Juan leaped back to his gun position, and Curtis tore another grenade from the crate at his feet, the fore gun of that tank blasted forth!

There was a shrill whining as the shell, misdirected, went above their heads and back into the jungle.

Juan was firing again with the machine gun, trying to work toward another lucky demolition of the approaching monster. But the hail of his bullets ricochetting off the steel belly of the tank told what little effect his fire was having.

Curtis pulled pin again on the grenade he held, just as the second tank gun blazed forth at their position. The second shot was closer, blasting into the wall high above and behind them, showering the platform with a rain of stone and dirt.

Then Curtis hurled again, his grenade exploding directly beneath the belly of the oncoming tank. It went over and back in a geyser of flame and dirt and noise.

The tank Juan had gotten with his lucky through-chink hail of machine gun fire, now having replaced the driver, was limping back away from the courtyard platform, heading toward the wall gate.

Juan rose, leaving his gun position, and stepped to the grenade crate. He was grinning widely.

“I stop that beetle from get away, amigo!” Juan exclaimed, seizing a grenade.

Curtis started to protest that the distance was all of a hundred yards, that the accuracy of such a throw, not to mention the distance, was next to impossible. And then he saw the ripple of ebon shoulder muscle through Juan’s magnificent torso, and clamped his jaw shut.

Juan pulled the pin with his white, even, tough teeth.

Then he drew back his massive arm, counting briefly, his huge chest leaning far out over their buttresses of boulders. He grunted, hurling the grenade with every last atom of his superb strength.

And even as the grenade sailed high across the courtyard, straight toward the tank making for the wall gate, the staccato chatter of machine gun fire burst forth from the side of the disabled tank lying half-over some fifty yards from their platform.

Juan’s mouth opened in swift pain as the bullets ripped across his massive chest. Then his white teeth were flashing against his ebon face, belying the pain in his dark eyes. He’d exposed himself as far too vulnerable a target.

Juan slumped down behind the boulder buttresses on the platform, just as his grenade landed beneath the caterpillars of the tank heading for the wall gate. The explosion was violent, definite, as the tank bounced crazily over on its tower and stopped.

Then Curtis was beside him, holding his massive handsome black head in his arms, looking sickly, grimly, at the blood that burbled from Juan’s pierced chest.

“It... is... over... for Juan, amigo,” the massive negro gasped.

Jo was hovering solicitously beside Curtis and his fallen comrade. Her lovely face was white, her eyes welled with unshed tears.

Then the thunderous clamor of many tank motors took up anew outside the walled courtyard. And the girl and the white man, and the dying Juan all knew that another tank attack was starting, and that there would be many more than four to face in this fresh onslaught.

“They come in... greater... numbers, amigo,” Juan said weakly.

Curtis said nothing. His own eyes were as misted as Jo’s.

“Peru,” Juan mumbled. “Not fall... under heel... conqueror.” He coughed, blood reddening his white, strong teeth. “Great God Sacha... come aid... in hour... Peru’s need... as always... before.”[7]

Juan’s brown eyes were glazing, staring almost sightlessly up at Curtis and the girl. A reddish foam flecked the corners of his handsome mouth.

“Sacha... Great God Snake... Great Daughter of Sacha... Paswulg neh... como... salendar istu zes,” Juan mumbled thickly.

Jo looked at Curtis.

“What does he say?”

Curtis shook his head, bewilderedly.

“I’m not certain. It’s an ancient incantation, Inca origin. Prayer to the daughter of the snake god, Sacha.”

The noise of the rumbling tanks was very much louder now, and Curtis looked up sharply. At any instant they would rumble through the wall gate.

And suddenly there was another noise. Thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance, and the sky seemed to take a darker tint. The jungle creatures chattered nervously above all this.

“Sacha,” Juan gasped, “Rusmach sensamol... inshani yegreda zes.” Again he coughed, weakly.

Against the darkening sky there came the sudden flashing flame of lightning!

And then the thunder broke forth like a million rolling kettle drums furiously crashing cadence one against the other. Huge drops of rain began to splatter down, while the red sky became dusty-amber, then gray-black.

“Sacha!” Juan gasped, “eresuch zes istu! Klabon... urinti... moll.”

Again the lighting flashed across the gray black sky. The jungle creatures were silent now, and there was no sound against the growing storm save the rumbling snarl of the tank motors approaching the wall gate entrance to the courtyard.

Juan’s eyes suddenly lidded, his head rolled limply. Curtis looked up at Jo.

Juan gasped one more sentence before his huge body went completely limp in Curtis’ arms.

“Sacha, wunphy zes constuiduo!”

Curtis lowered him to the platform.

“He’s dead,” he told Jo.

And then the thunder and the lightning crackled and spat above them in the darkened heavens, while through the wall gate crawled the first ominous line of tanks!

The rain was increasing from scattered huge drops to a growing tattoo that rose in intensity with every passing instant. Curtis lifted Juan’s body swiftly, but gently, in his arms, moving it back against the wall at the rear of the platform.

And as he dashed back to Jo’s side the rain was suddenly a drenching, driving deluge of jungle fury, while the sky opened in flashing flame and thundered wildly.

And the tanks, fifteen of them, were in the courtyard, while others still crawled in!

The courtyard was rapidly becoming a vast sea of mud and water as the torrent continued to pour down from the maddened skies. The first of the tanks wheeled to open fire with its fore gun on the platform.

The sound of the gun was lost in the thunder above them, but its flame spat through the darkness of the storm, and its effect was told in the terrible crashing devastation it wrought on the huge wall directly behind their position on the platform.

Curtis threw his arm about Jo’s waist, hurling her to the side as the shell smashed into the wall behind them. And then the tanks were driving through the sea of mud in the courtyard, rushing straight at the platform.

Curtis glanced at the crate of grenades and realized the utter futility of such an effort at resistance. Their only chance now lay in a desperate dash through the rain and mud and darkness.

It was at that moment, when Curtis debated swiftly their next action, that Jo, half turned to glance at the devastation wrought on the platform wall, screamed shrilly, horribly.

Curtis turned, glancing swiftly at the gaping rent in the wall, and then his jaw fell slack, while horror filled his eyes.

An incredibly huge snake, a coiling, undulating monster at least five feet thick and forty yards long, was writhing from the gaping rent in the platform wall!

And it was Curtis who first saw the girl atop the creature’s back, the girl who rode the giant reptile and brandished a lance in one hand as her body swayed just behind its dipping, weaving head. It was Curtis who was first to see the girl, and scream in hoarse horror.

“Good God!”

And then he was shielding Jo with his body, backing hard against the far end of the platform wall while the giant reptile and its weird human rider slithered forth from the gap in the wall.

“Sacha!” Curtis murmured in horrified conviction. “Sacha the Snake God, and the daughter of Sacha!”

“Allan, Allan,” Jo was whispering in terror, “Juan was calling, summoning, that... that monster and its mistress!”

Allan Curtis gripped the girl’s arm tightly. White-faced, he nodded.

Chapter X

Sacha

The scene was like something from the black depths of a horrible nightmare. The roaring growl of the thunder had intensified, and the jagged forks of lightning slashed the boiling heavens with eye-searing brilliance as the immense reptile slithered through the shattered wall.

Stone crunched to powder under the mighty body of the monstrous beast as it slid ponderously over the smashed debris.

As the great snake’s angrily weaving head flowed through the demolished aperture, Curtis crouched against their barricade, protecting Jo with his body.

Logical thought or reasoning was impossible.

This monstrous apparition was impossible, beyond the wildest flights of imagination, but still it existed before his eyes.

Through the pelting rain he could see the figure of the girl astride the snake’s back. Her head was thrown back exultantly and her rain-darkened hair streamed gloriously behind her, like a triumphant banner.

He had only one brief glimpse of her savagely flashing eyes, her sharply chiseled features, before she was carried from his range of vision as the mighty reptile slithered massively down the broken steps leading to the courtyard.

The incredibly huge body of the snake flowed past them, writhing with mighty undulations that shook the very foundations of the stout stone barricade.

Curtis scrambled to the side of the barricade where they had placed their machine gun and peered into the courtyard — where the front line of German tanks was advancing inexorably.

Even through the torrential rain he could see the oncoming tanks, squat, invincible harbingers of destruction. There were eight of them proceeding in formation toward the barricade.

The mighty head of the snake was weaving and swooping thirty feet in the air, and its vast coiling length was slithering toward the foremost tank.

Curtis felt his heart hammering sickeningly in his body. His hands clenched until he could feel them numbing.

This incredible scene was like a page torn from a madman’s view of Dante’s inferno. Its unbelievable import was physically staggering.

The thunder broke over the courtyard like the crashing of giant sledges, and in the wild illumination furnished by the blazing lightning, Curtis saw the massively coiling body of the snake loop slowly but inevitably about the nearest tank.

The advance of the tank was instantly halted.

The coils of the snake lashed another loop about the halted tank and lifted it clear of the ground.

The forward guns of the tank swung helplessly back and forth like the feelers of a giant bug. A futile burst spat from the muzzles of the gun, but the tank was inexorably lifted — five — ten — a dozen feet from the soggy, muddy ground.

Then the thick coils tightened with the irresistible power of a mighty vise. Dozens of feet above the suspended tank, the daughter of the snake god flung her head back and screamed a strange, chilling command into the teeth of the maddened storm.

Curtis heard a rending, cracking sound, that carried to him, even above the banshee-howl of the wind. Through the drenching murky rain he saw the sides of the tank crumple under the tremendous pressure of the great snake’s coiled body. The steel armor of the tank cracked inexorably, and as the mighty coils continued to tighten, the tank crumpled into a twisted, shattered mass of wreckage.

A horrible, nerve-chilling cry came from the twisted, crushed tank as the coils of the snake tightened with one final undulation.

Curtis felt a shudder pass through him.

From the tangled wreckage of the tank a human figure fell to the ground. Or rather something that had been a human figure. The mangled, broken thing that lay beneath the suspended tank had only the faintest resemblance to a human body.

The crushed wreckage of the tank was raised high now by the fantastically immense snake, and at a signal from the imperious girl, the coiled body of the snake whipped the tangled wreckage to the ground with a shuddering crash.

The crushed tank lay on its side, a broken, useless thing. The snake slithered away from it and moved with sinuous speed toward the other tanks.

Three of the oncoming tanks had halted and wheeled about to face the monstrous snake. It was obvious that they had witnessed the destruction of the first tank.

A rattling burst of fire broke from the tower guns of the three tanks, and Curtis saw that concerted fire pour into the flank of the mighty snake.

Its head was weaving high in the air, keeping the girl out of the range of fire, but its own immense body was completely unprotected before the murderous blast from the three tanks.

Still the immense creature moved forward. There was no hesitation in its deliberate advance. Instead the fire of the three tanks seemed to infuriate it to a pitch of savage, devastating rage.

With lashing speed its tail looped about the first of the tanks, jerking it into the air. With a sweeping movement it swung the tank in a wide arc and dashed it into the side of the second with incredible force.

The massive steel-armored vehicle shattered completely the tank it struck, knocking it onto its side. The tower door of the tank opened and three men spilled out. In the murky darkness it was impossible to see their faces, but the congealing horror that gripped them was evident from their frozen helplessness before the spectacle that met their eyes.

They did not attempt to run. One of them sank to his knees, his hands clasped over his eyes, but the other stood in motionless terror as the mighty head of the snake passed over them, high in the air.

The tail of the snake, as thick as a tree trunk, whipped about the three men. Their arms and legs threshed with frantic futility as they were lifted into the air. The coils of the snake tightened once — swiftly and inevitably — and the arms and legs of the German tank crew ceased to move.

Curtis felt Jo trembling against him. Her face was frozen in rigid horror. With a low moan she buried her face against his chest.

Curtis held her tightly with one arm, and with the other he swung the machine gun about to cover the courtyard.

The remaining tanks were wheeling about and lumbering desperately for the court entrance. The mighty length of the snake coiled swiftly and slithered after them. High in the air, the slim figure of the daughter of the snake god was vaguely visible through the downpour. Lance held high she screamed into the gale, her glorious hair streaming wildly behind her. She was, at once, the most thrilling, the most savage sight Curtis had ever witnessed.

As the tanks escaped through the court entrance, Curtis saw a small contingent of Germans pour into sight from a wall gate on the opposite side of the enclosure.

Curtis saw that the three leading German soldiers were dragging a heavy, anti-tank gun between them. In one of the flashes of lightning he saw that they were hastily setting it for action, with its heavy blunt muzzle directed at the vulnerable flank of the huge snake.

Swiftly, Curtis swung the machine gun around to cover the small band of Germans. With savage speed he jammed both firing buttons down, sprayed a lethal burst at the German contingent.

His first blast was off, but as he swung the gun into more accurate position, three of the Germans staggered and fell to the muddy ground.

The others flung themselves prone as they located the direction of Curtis’ fire.

Curtis fired desperately at their position, but he couldn’t tell if his raking fire was hitting its objective.

A belching burst from the anti-tank gun suddenly sounded, and Curtis saw a flash of flame spear through the muggy darkness.

In spite of his fire the Germans had managed to get their anti-tank gun into action.

Peering through the downpour Curtis saw the immense shadowy shape of the snake veering and slithering toward the German gun crew.

Another blast from the anti-tank gun sounded, and the shrill staccato of machine gun fire was added to the melee, but the mighty snake continued its inexorable advance.

Within fifty feet of the gun crew the thick bludgeoning tail of the snake lashed out with terrific speed. Sweeping over the muddy ground with tremendous force it smashed into the Germans, slamming them to the ground like toy soldiers before the sweep of a mighty fist.

The anti-tank gun was hurled fifty feet through the air. It crashed against the wall of the enclosure, a twisted mass of useless wreckage.

The immense head of the snake reared in the air and Curtis saw that the slim body of the girl was lying limply across the reptile’s broad back.

The lance had fallen from her hand and was lying on the ground. Curtis saw then, even through the blinding gusts of rain, the blood that trickled from the girl’s body and painted a red smear against the side of the monstrous snake.

The body of the snake slowly uncoiled. The roaring fury of the storm crescendoed to a wild pitch, and in the keening maelstrom of the tempest there was a sobbing mournful note that sent a chill through Curtis.

Through the blinding storm Curtis could see the mighty head of the snake lowering slowly to the ground. The limp figure of the daughter of the snake god was dead, and some psychic awareness of this seemed to be transmuted to the mighty snake and to the endless darkness and mystery of the Peruvian jungle.

Then Curtis saw the mighty length of the snake coiling again and moving with deliberate purpose toward the courtyard entrance through which the German tanks had disappeared...

Curtis held Jo closely in his arms.

“We’ve got a chance again,” he said tensely. “With luck we can make the coast. My work here is done. Rather it was done for me by—”

“Sacha,” Jo murmured. “Oh, Allan, I feel as if I’m about to lose my mind. Have I dreamed all of this unimaginable horror?”

“I don’t think so,” Allan said softly. “There are things in the depths of this country which few white people would believe, even if they saw. I think we’ve seen one of those things. At any rate the menace to the unity of South America is over, forever, I believe.”

Jo drew a short shuddering breath. “Is there any chance for us to get out of here? Tell me the truth, Allan. I won’t mind if we can’t. We’ll be going together, at least.”

Curtis looked carefully around the ravages of the storm, then he looked down at Jo and, for the first time in many hours, he grinned.

“I don’t think we’ll get out,” he said, “I know it.”

HEMISPHERIC SOLIDARITY WINS!

SOUTH AMERICAN NATIONS VOTE CRUSHING REBUFF TO THE AXIS

(S.P.P.) With the final ironing out of the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border disputes, the Pan American Conference at Rio de Janeiro lined up solidly to form an anti-axis bloc which will undoubtedly be reviewed in history as one of the greatest Allied victories of the century.

The Battle of Manetong

First published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1942.

Dawn was spreading a hazy light over the oppressively humid Egyptian plateau when the young German officer received the message.

He was seated before a radio transmitter with earphones strapped over his closely cropped blonde hair, in a hot airless tent which had been set up at the rear of the small German encampment.

He read the message carefully a second time, frowning in concentration.

Then he removed the headphones and stood up. He beckoned to another young officer who was dozing on a cot in the corner.

“Relieve me for a few moments. I must deliver this message to Captain Hohffer immediately.”

Picking up his sharply peaked hat he strode from the tent. He had only to pass the mess kitchen and a line of supply trucks before reaching the large tent marked with the insignia of the swastika.

The Captain’s orderly saluted him, presented arms.

“A message for Captain Hohffer,” the wireless operator snapped. “It is important.”

The orderly lowered his gun and drew aside the flap of the tent. The wireless operator saluted and entered the tent. Captain Hohffer was seated at a large table in the center of the tent frowning absorbedly at maps and charts. A kerosene lamp smoked on the table and provided a yellow flickering illumination.

The captain was a tall, spare man with a prominent, bony nose and glacial, blue eyes. His uniform tunic was open at the throat and a cigarette was burning low in his fingers.

He looked up sharply as the radio operator saluted.

“Yes?”

“Message for the Captain,” the young officer said stiffly. “It’s from Intelligence Headquarters. I thought I should bring it right over, sir.”

The captain took the message and scanned it rapidly. When he finished reading a tight smile spread his lips. His cold blue eyes glinted with amusement.

“You did right, Herr Lieutenant,” he said. “These orders are extremely important. We break camp immediately. That is all.”

When the wireless operator had departed the Captain called his orderly.

“Summon Lieutenant Mueller and Oberlieutenant Schmidt here at once,” he said crisply.

When the two officers entered his tent a few moments later the captain permitted himself the luxury of a smile.

“For several weeks,” he said, “we have been waiting here for orders. Now the orders have arrived, and most pleasant orders they are. Intelligence has learned that a column of British troops is escorting a caravan of wounded natives and colonials back to Cairo. This column will pass within about five miles of our present position. They will be forced to cross the Nile tributary at that point. Their approach to the bridge is over a wide plateau known as the Manetong area. There is no cover on this stretch. Our artillery will be set up on the opposite side of the river. From that point we’ll be able to command the bridgehead and the Manetong plateau. When the British column reaches that our artillery will blow them to dust.”

“What is the strength of the British force?” Lieutenant Mueller asked. There was a hint of cautious nervousness in his voice.

Captain Hohffer smiled. “Insignificant in comparison to ours,” he replied. “You know our policy is to strike only when the numerical advantage is greatly in our favor. The British will not have a chance, of that you may be sure.”

The long winding British truck column proceeded slowly through the barren foot hills that led to the Manetong plateau. The column consisted of twenty eight creaking trucks loaded to capacity with soldiers, most of them wounded. Their uniforms were dusty and tattered from the ravages of the screeching, blasting sandstorms that howled incessantly over the plateaus of Libya and Egypt.

In a small rattling car at the head of the slowly crawling procession rode Major Archibald Douglass, a stocky, red-faced man of fifty, the commander of the small force. The interior of the car was like an oven. Perspiration rolled steadily from the major’s forehead, cutting muddy furrows through the yellow caked dust on his face.

For the dozenth time he mopped his flowing face and cursed the heat and the dust in fluent language. The driver, a gaunt Australian with a dirty bandage over his head, grinned in frank admiration at the major’s eloquence.

“The heat is annoying, sir,” he said.

The major snorted, “That’s a bit of understatement, corporal. This heat is hellish. The only advantage to this climate is that the Jerries die like flies in this heat. Can’t stand it at all.”

“Good thing,” the Australian corporal muttered.

For a few minutes they bounced along in a hot, oppressive silence. The road was only a rutted pathway a few feet wide, and its uneven shoulders rocked the car with monotonous regularity.

The major’s keen narrowed eyes swept carefully over the horizon.

“Too bad for us today if we bump into a tank corps of Jerries,” he said quietly. “Intelligence decided they couldn’t spare a tank escort for us. Hope they know what they’re doing.”

The Australian driver nodded grimly—

“We’d be nice pickings for the Jerries. They’d have a good time with a truck caravan of wounded soldiers. Just their blasted style.”

“Well,” the major said philosophically, “I see no point in worrying about it. If we get past the Manetong plateau we’ll be out of danger. Once beyond that open stretch and over the bridge I don’t think the Jerries will bother us.”

For another few moments they drove in silence. Then the major tilted his head and a faint frown creased his forehead. He glanced at the driver and then peered into the white glaring sky.

After a long anxious scrutiny he cleared his throat.

“I say, corporal,” he said, “do you hear anything?”

The corporal was staring fixedly at the rutted road but the knuckles of his big hands had whitened on the wheel. He nodded slowly.

“Sounds like a blooming buzzing fly.”

“Or a wasp,” the major said softly.

He shaded his eyes with both hands and swept a long glance over the cloudless glaring sky.

“Must be pretty high,” he said, after a moment.

The driver swallowed the dust in his throat.

“Do we keep going, sir?” he asked. The major glanced at him and smiled slightly.

“Of course. These wounded men need attention and hospital care. Naturally we will continue on. But keep your eyes sharp, corporal.”

As the small car jolted along, the major unslung his field glasses and carefully wiped the film of dust from their lenses.

“I’ll do the same,” he said as they drove on in silence...

Captain Hohffer was waiting impatiently as the young flyer clambered from the cockpit of his ship and dropped to the dry, hard ground.

“Well?” he snapped. “Have you located the British column?”

“Yes, Sir,” the lieutenant answered, saluting. “They are about six hours from the bridgehead. They are travelling very slowly.”

“Good, good,” Captain Hohffer said, smiling. “Those six hours will give us ample time to prepare a pleasant reception for them.”

Turning he swept keen experienced eyes over the scene of preparation that surrounded him. He was standing on a wide knoll that overlooked the sluggishly moving Nile tributary and the Manetong plateau. It was over this broad exposed plateau that the British column must travel.

Captain Hohffer smiled mirthlessly and swung about to face the opposite side of the knoll where his men were setting up their artillery. As his careful eye checked off each group of men and each maneuvering truck and tank, he nodded slowly in a pleased manner.

Everything was progressing satisfactorily. When the stupid British arrived they would be ready for them. His artillery would smash the British column in one decisive blast. Then the mopping up process would be only a formality.

The entire success of the attack depended on the unexpected devastation of the artillery barrage. For that reason Captain Hohffer was enraged at the information brought to him by Lieutenant Mueller a few moments later.

“I regret to report,” Lieutenant Mueller said nervously, “that my men have met great difficulty in establishing artillery positions as you ordered. The ground is too soft to support the weight of the guns.”

Captain Hohffer reddened in anger. “Fool!” he said furiously. “I will not listen to excuses. Everything is hinged on the artillery barrage. It must be as I have ordered.”

Lieutenant Mueller mopped his brow anxiously.

“My men have discovered a brick foundation in the form of a square at the base of the knoll. If we could mount our guns there and—”

“Impossible!” Captain Hohffer stormed. “Their fire would not clear the top of the knoll. Are you so stupid, lieutenant, that you cannot realize that?”

“We could build a platform on the brick foundation,” the lieutenant suggested desperately. “That was what I had in mind, Captain. If our guns were mounted on a structure thirty or forty feet high their fire would easily clear the top of the knoll. The brick foundation is deep and solid. It would easily support the jarring of the guns.” Captain Hohffer was silent a moment, frowning thoughtfully. Then he said:

“How do you propose to raise the guns to the top of this structure?”

“We have hoist equipment,” Lieutenant Mueller answered. “It would only be an hour’s work to raise the guns in place after the platform is completed.”

“And how long will that take?” Lieutenant Mueller made a swift mental calculation.

“If we use every available man in its construction,” he answered with assurance, “I can promise the Captain that the work will be completed in three hours.”

Captain Hohffer glanced at his watch.

“Possibly your proposal will be feasible,” he said. “Show me this foundation now. I will decide.”

At the entrance of the Manetong plateau, the British column halted. Major Archibald Douglass crawled stiffly from his car and walked back along the line of trucks.

The infantry escort was lying on the hot hard ground resting gratefully. It was almost three in the afternoon — the hottest hour of the day — and they had been marching steadily since dawn.

The major nodded to them as he walked by and they grinned back.

In the west the sun was dropping slowly, a blazingly intense ball of molten brass in a white sky. The major cast a careful glance over that deceptively peaceful sky.

He hadn’t heard any more planes and that only increased his caution. A funny feeling persisted in him that they were heading for danger. He shook the feeling away with an irritable shrug and began his inspection of the truckloads of wounded men.

The heat and the flies and the pain of festering wounds drove many of the wounded men into feverish hysteria; others it killed outright. But a large number of the wounded, the major saw, were conscious, enduring every second of their agony, features drawn into meaningless masks, eyes distended in torment.

Hard bitter lines etched themselves into the major’s face as he walked on, surveying truck after truck full of pain-crazed men.

There was nothing he could do for them but get them to hospitals as quickly as possible. Nothing on earth was going to prevent him from doing that, he decided.

This thought, with its touch of melodrama, almost made him blush. The major was not a heroic figure, given to stage speeches about Empire and Courage.

He was simply a man who did his job.

As he neared the end of the line of trucks a faint voice hailed him.

Glancing toward the sound of the voice, the major saw an aged, patriarchal Hebrew lying in a special litter in the last truck. The man’s brown, deeply seamed face was covered with a flowing white beard and his wise solemn eyes were filmed with a fog of pain.

His name, the major remembered, was Mosoch. The venerable patriarch was another victim of German barbarism. Both of his legs had been broken and he had been shot through the shoulder.

But he still lived. He had been invaluable to the major on the desert trek. Knowing Egypt like a wise father knows his child, he had counselled and advised the major in many ways.

Smiling, the major stepped to the side of the truck.

“It won’t be long now,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll be in a hospital bed this time tomorrow.”

“I will be where He wills it,” the old man answered, nodding slowly. His thin, veined hands gripped the frayed, leather bound book that lay next to him, and his deep eyes looked upward.

“That which has been written,” he said, “is as inevitable as the dropping of a stone or the flowing of a river.”

Awkwardly the major patted the old man’s shoulder.

The Hebrew turned his eyes to him.

“I must warn you,” he said softly. “We are traveling toward the place which He declared accursed. Wicked Sennaar, blasted symbol of man’s evil, lies ahead of us. We must not go on. Our feet must not trod the ground that has felt the wrath of God. Disaster falls swift on the evil ones who violate the commands of the God of Jehovah. So much has been written.”

The old man’s voice trailed off weakly. His eyes turned to the heavens. His cracked, dust-caked lips moved painfully as his fingers caressed the book at his side.

The major turned slowly from the truck and started back to his car. The men climbed to their feet and swung their rifles to their backs as he passed.

They knew from the set of his jaw that they were going on...

In a few minutes the line of trucks was crawling wearily onto the broad lap of the Manetong plateau — heading for the narrow bridge that spanned the sluggish Nile tributary.

Beyond that bridge was a low wide knoll spreading peacefully along the Nile stream — and hiding what lay behind it...

Captain Hohffer stood beside the towering firing structure which his men had erected at the base of the knoll. The foundation of the platform was made of huge slab bricks, held together by ancient, crusted slime.

With excellent efficiency his men had built a platform of steel and timber that reached forty feet in the air.

On the broad top of the firing structure heavy guns had been mounted, their ugly snouts covering the Manetong plateau.

Captain Hohffer felt a gloating anticipation mounting in his breast. Everything had been planned to the last detail. Every man was at his post, awaiting the signal.

With calm deliberation the captain drew his revolver from its belt holster.

He glanced at his watch.

The British were now almost at the bridge.

When he fired his gun the heavy artillery on top of the firing structure would blaze away. That one devastating barrage would completely wipe out the column of trucks.

The British would not have a chance. They would never realize what hit them.

Captain Hohffer smiled and raised his gun in the air. This would be a great personal triumph. He might receive the Iron Cross. Who could tell?

He would give his men an extra rest period when this was over. Building that structure hadn’t been an easy task. Even with every man it had been exhausting work. The men were very tired. Even now, awaiting the bark of his gun, they were sluggish and listless.

Yes, he would give them an extra rest period — after the thunderous barrage of his heavy artillery had destroyed the British column.

Glancing again at his watch, his finger tightened on the trigger of the gun. He was chuckling when he fired the single clear signal shot...

The major, riding in the head car of the small truck column, heard the shot and his blood ran cold.

The truck column was only twenty yards from the bridge, and he realized with sickening clarity, that somehow he had led his men into a trap.

At his command the tall Australian driver slammed on the brakes and the major scrambled out of the car. With a quick glance he swept the terrain. Not a spot of cover in miles!

The shot had been fired from behind the knoll that loomed beyond the narrow river.

Silence followed that first shot, but it was broken again by another revolver shot. Two more scattered revolver shots followed in quick succession and again there was silence.

The major stared bewilderedly at the knoll. If this was a trap it was a peculiar one. But he didn’t waste any more time pondering the peculiarity of the situation.

There was only one course of action to follow.

“Fix bayonets!” he bawled down the line at his men. “Follow me.”

Jerking the revolver from his holster he sprang onto the bridge and charged across to the opposite shore.

At his heels was his Australian driver, and behind him thundered the rest of his men, seventy-three strong.

The rise that led to the top of the knoll was a gradual slope a hundred yards in length. Up this the major’s troops charged, bayonets fixed.

They had no conception of what lay beyond the rim of the knoll. They could hear nothing, or see nothing that would give them an indication of what they were attacking.

The major reached the top of the knoll first. The scene that met his eyes almost stopped his heart.

A complete German attacking force was spread at the base of the knoll. A huge structure supporting a dozen pieces of heavy artillery had been erected, and dozens of tanks flanked it on either side in attacking formation.

Hundreds of German soldiers manned the equipment. At first glance the major knew that he and his men had blundered into a trap from which there was no escaping. But as his eyes swung over the scene his fear for his men was replaced by sheer incredulous amazement.

For the hundreds of German soldiers were not preparing to open fire or unleash a savage tank attack. They were milling about in confusion, as if they had forgotten their orders, or were completely demoralized by some major catastrophe.

The major was almost too stunned to take advantage of the situation. But as his men crowded up the slope at his heels, he snapped to a full appreciation of his advantage.

“Charge!” he yelled. “Give ’em hell!”

At the base of the slope, beside the towering artillery structure, the major met a maniacal German officer. He was the only man who offered any resistance.

He was screaming, “The fools! The fools! They won’t listen to me. They’ve gone mad. They don’t understand—”

When this officer saw the charging British soldiers he fired wildly at them, but his aim was erratic. The major dropped him for good with one careful shot.

After that it only took a short time to round up the Germans, disarm them and confiscate their equipment...

“Damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” the Australian driver said to the major, “This whole bunch of kraut heads act like they’ve gone sun daffy.”

The major didn’t answer. Queer, disturbing thoughts were plucking at his brain, but he was too busy superintending the job of taking over the German camp, to worry about anything else.

Those of the wounded that could be moved were shifted to the faster German trucks, and sped on to Cairo. A number of soldiers were left to guard the prisoners, captured tanks, and artillery.

It was a long tiring job to organize and manage, but through it all the major’s attention wandered time and again to a number of things beyond his understanding.

Had all the Germans been suddenly sun-struck? That question popped into his mind a dozen times during the long hot afternoon, as he watched the dazed, glassy-eyed, stumbling prisoners being herded into trucks.

And their vague, senseless mumblings, incoherent and meaningless—

Finally the long tiresome job was done. The prisoners were under guard, his own men were fed and quartered for the night, and the major could relax.

That is, after he wrote his nightly report, he could relax.

In an improvised tent he stared for a long moment at the sheet of paper on the table, before tearing it up and throwing it disgustedly into a corner.

Lighting a cigarette he strolled out of the tent. Night, black and swift, had descended. The bowl of the dark sky was studded with myriad pin points of silver.

Looming above in the blackness was the bulky outline of the firing tower the Germans had constructed to elevate their artillery.

The major walked slowly along the row of trucks that held those unfortunates who couldn’t be moved. He would start them on their way as soon as possible. Some strange attraction drew him to the end of the line, where a white cloaked figure with a flowing beard lay in uncomplaining agony, mumbling his ageless prayers.

Mosoch, the Hebrew, was lying patiently in his litter, and he looked up when the major approached.

One glance into those sunken, filmy eyes was enough to reveal that the angel of death was laying his soothing hand on that noble, suffering brow.

“My time is come,” Mosoch said feebly, “it has been written. On this place where the wrath of the God of Jehovah has been felt, I find my moment. Here, where the command of the Lord has been violated, I depart. That much has been written. Good-bye, my friend.”

“Please,” Major Archibald Douglass leaned forward and gripped the old patriarch’s arm, “you mustn’t go. I mean — I mean without explaining what you’ve said. About the wrath of the Lord, I mean. I must know.”

He leaned forward as the old man’s lips fluttered laboriously. The major heard three words, three strange, unbelievable words.

The last word was followed by a gasping choke, and before it had ceased to sound, Mosoch was dead.

Shaken, the major returned to his tent. He smoked three cigarettes nervously trying to decide what to write in his official report of the action. Through the flap of the tent he could see the looming bulk of the artillery structure the Germans had built.

What a good joke on them.

After a while Major Douglass wrote his report.

He wrote: “In a skirmish at the bridge head of the Nile tributary, our force was able to capture the personnel and equipment of an ambushing German camp. Our success was due primarily to the bad judgment of the enemies’ selection of artillery positions He smiled as he wrote that last line. The report was rather inadequate but, after all, what else could he say?

In a military report he couldn’t point out the significance of a fact that had only occurred to him a few moments ago. Namely, that the Manetong plateau derived its name from a contraction of two English words, “many” and “tongue.”

Nor could he relate the incident of a feverish, dying Hebrew who had whispered to him that the curse of the Lord lay over this ground because on it presumptuous man had attempted to erect a structure into heaven.

For adding all this together, his superior officers would decide that he was trying to imply that the Germans had accidentally built an artillery structure on the foundation of the ancient, almost legendary Tower of Babel.

Which was perfectly silly, of course.

Duncan’s Dreadful Doll

First published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1942.

Duncan Digit was a tall, amiable young man with an immense capacity for Scotch whisky and an equally immense capacity for making a fool of himself on any and all occasions.

Perhaps he had other qualifications but no one had ever noticed their existence. If such qualities did exist they were dwarfed by his two more prominent characteristics.

At the present moment he was displaying these two major idiosyncrasies to the crowd that thronged about his night club table.

With a wide smile, that had a fixed frozen quality, he raised his glass in an unsteady gesture.

“Eat, drink and be merry,” he chirruped gaily, “for tomorrow I die.”

The blonde at his right hiccoughed apprehensively but Duncan regarded her solemnly.

“Ish truth,” he assured her mournfully. Over the din provided by the exceedingly brassy band, he repeated sadly, “tomorrow I die. My dear aunt ish arriving tomorrow to cut me out of her will. Like that!”

With an emphatic gesture, he brought the edge of his palm down on the table. A glass toppled and spilled. Scotch dribbled to the floor. Duncan watched this waste sadly.

“Ish shame,” he muttered. “Tomorrow I die.”

In spite of Duncan’s state of mind, everyone else at the small, crowded night club seemed to be in high spirits. Liquor flowed merrily and the babel of voices was frenziedly gay.

The only other person who seemed to share Duncan’s melancholy was a wrinkled, ragged Gypsy who stood in one corner of the room and moodily observed the festivities. On her fat brown arms a dozen charm bracelets clinked together as she moved, and a red and white bandana was draped over her dark greasy hair.

Madam Pilar had every right to be unhappy. She had to spend six nights a week in the hot, airless, smoke-filled club, and that was enough to make anyone unhappy.

She worked at the club as a fortune teller and seer, and since the fortunes of the crowd were invariably not worth telling, the job was very dull.

Disconsolately she moved about the room and finally stopped before Duncan’s table.

He looked up and blinked drowsily. Then he shook his head and took another gulp from his drink.

“Ish better than pink elephants,” he muttered philosophically. Looking again, he was pleased to discover that the apparition had not vanished. Maybe it wasn’t an apparition.

“Have a drink?” he asked warily. “Tomorrow I die,” he added in the way of further inducement.

Thank you,” Madam Pilar said in a toneless voice. She sat down. “Why do you die tomorrow?”

“I got enemies,” Duncan said vaguely.

“Who... are they?” the Gypsy demanded.

Duncan burped sleepily. “Too many to count.”

The Gypsy leaned forward and regarded him steadily.

“I have charms to protect you,” she whispered.

Duncan brightened. “Thas’ good. Need lotsa charms.”

The Gypsy brought forth a small ragged doll from the voluminous folds of her dress. It was about ten inches high. The face of the doll was completely blank.

“Do you notice the resemblance?” the Gypsy whispered impressively.

“Spitting image,” Duncan said, nodding vigorously.

“This will protect your body from physical harm,” said the Gypsy. “Never leave it out of your possession.”

Duncan stared blearily at the doll. “Ish cute,” he said fondly.

The Gypsy dug into her dress again and brought out a small scissors. With a quick gesture she snipped a lock of hair from Duncan’s head.

Duncan nodded approvingly.

“Just a trim, though,” he said, wagging a finger.

The Gypsy took his hands in hers then and rapidly snipped the nails from his index and middle fingers. She wrapped the lock of hair about the nail parings and stuffed the tiny ball into an opening in the doll’s chest.

“The voodoo spell of the doll will protect you always,” the Gypsy said solemnly. “Keep it always with you and you will be safe. Never, never, leave it out of your possession. Do you understand?”

Duncan looked into the eyes of the Gypsy. They burned strangely at him, piercing through his alcoholic stupor.

He reached out and took the doll in his arms.

“I understand,” he said, hiccoughing jerkily. “The li’l guy stays with me from now on. Jush like to see somebody take him away.” He smiled blissfully down into the doll’s blank face. “We’re pals, thatsh what we are!”

When he looked up again the Gypsy was gone.

Duncan awoke the next morning in his own apartment. The events of the previous night were vague and cloudy, but he was agreeably surprised to discover that his head felt normal.

He lay in bed for a few moments staring at the ceiling, and then he became aware that he seemed to be bouncing slightly on the mattress.

The sensation was not unpleasant, but it was definitely disturbing. He sat up straight, but he continued to bounce up and down.

“Well, well,” he said aloud.

The door of his room opened then, and his valet, a thin, impeccable, imperturbable little man, entered, bearing a tray in one hand and an ice pack in the other.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Is it?” Duncan was still rocking about on the bed and his mind was occupied with that problem. He didn’t care whether, it was a good morning or not.

“Look here, Beetle,” he said abruptly, “am I bouncing around on this bed, or am I not?”

Beetle set the tray down and considered the situation.

“Yes, sir,” he said gravely.

“Yes, what?”

“You definitely seem to be bouncing.

Do you find it diverting?”

“Hang it, Beetle,” Duncan said plaintively, “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

“Really sir,” Beetle’s tone was politely astonished, but not particularly interested.

Duncan continued to bounce on the mattress. “Was I very drunk last night, Beetle?” he asked.

“No more than usual, sir.”

“I presume I made an utter fool of myself,” Duncan said gloomily.

“I presume so, sir.”

Duncan climbed from the bed. The solid floor felt comforting, but his shoulders and body were still shaking in an annoyingly rhythmic fashion. Even though he was absorbed with this disturbing phenomenon, he gradually became aware that Beetle was waiting to tell him something. And one look at the strained lines on the man’s normally impassive face was enough to warn him that the news he bore was unpleasant. “Well, Beetle,” he said resignedly, “what is it?”

“Your aunt has arrived, sir.” Beetle’s voice was quietly despairing as he added, “She is waiting for you in the sitting room. If I may say so, sir, she seems a most determined woman.”

“Hah!” Duncan cried bleakly. “That’s a classic understatement. Is she alone?”

“There is a young lady with her,” Beetle stated. “Her name is Elvira Scragg.”

“Lovely name,” Duncan said bitterly. “Reminds one of a riveting factory during the rush hour. Elvira Scragg! Bah!”

“Shall I tell them you will see them right away?” Beetle asked.

Duncan sat gloomily on the edge of the bed, and although he was still bouncing about, his mind was on other matters. His aunt, a majestic creature named Agatha, was here for the express purpose of cutting him out of any share in her estate. Duncan gnawed nervously on his finger nails. That was a pretty situation. If he couldn’t keep on the right side of her during her stay, there was no chance of her changing her mind. He sighed heavily.

“Tell them I’ll be right out. Ask them if they’ve had breakfast. Be nice to them Beetle. Remember the old Digit fortunes hang in the balance.”

A half hour later Duncan, dressed and shaved and looking reasonably, fresh, strode into the sitting room of his apartment a desperately cheery word of welcome on his lips.

“Dear old Auntie!”

His full-throated bellow brought a flicker of annoyance to the face of the large, granite-visaged female who was sitting in the room’s most comfortable chair.

Duncan’s Aunt Agatha looked up at him in faint disgust.

“How do you do, Duncan,” she said, with a commendable attempt at civility. “This,” she said, waving a careless hand at a large, lumpy girl who was looking anxiously at Duncan, “is Miss Elvira Scragg, the daughter of my oldest and dearest friend — for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter with you?” Duncan’s shoulders were still bouncing and jogging about and there was nothing he could do to improve the situation.

His aunt was peering closely at him with a slightly alarmed expression on her face.

“What is it? St. Vitus Dance?”

“Oh, no, no,” Duncan said quickly, “nothing like that. How do you do, Miss Scragg.” He changed the subject and nodded to the young lady and was rewarded by a toothsome grin and an awkward mumble in acknowledgment.

But his aunt was not to be distracted.

“Duncan!” she said sharply. “You don’t seem well. Why are you shaking and bouncing about? Stop it this instant, I say!”

It was a time for desperate measures.

Duncan executed a hippety-hop dance step and writhed his shoulders like a snake with prickly heat.

“Just a little dance step I picked up,” he explained glibly. “It’s the rage of the town now. They call it the Jive Bomber. Everybody’s doing it.”

“Oh,” Miss Elvira Scragg cried, “it looks exciting. Can we do it together?”

From the firing pan into the fire, Duncan thought miserably.

“It’s strictly a solo,” he said rapidly.

“Oh.”

At that fortunate moment Beetle entered the room to announce breakfast.

“Fine,” Duncan cried. “I’m starved. Would you care for a spot of bacon and eggs, auntie?”

“At three in the afternoon!” Aunt Agatha was aghast.

“Oh,” Duncan said.

Elvira and his Aunt followed him into the breakfast nook that commanded a sweeping, inspiring view of the park. It was a cozy spot but Duncan was in no mood to enjoy his breakfast or the esthetic appeal of the scenery.

As Beetle brought in the coffee, Aunt Agatha cleared her throat impressively. Duncan was still bouncing around on his chair, wondering when the hell the crazy nonsense would stop.

“Duncan,” Aunt Agatha said, “I have good news for you. Frankly, at one time, I considered disposing of my fortune to charity, instead of leaving it to you, my sole relative.”

Duncan listened hopefully and forgot about his jouncing, bouncing body.

“But I have changed my mind,” Aunt Agatha continued. “I feel that my money should stay in the family. While I do not consider you competent to handle my affairs, I believe that if you selected a proper marital partner, one who would exert a temperate influence over your irresponsible nature, the steadying result of such an arrangement might transform you into the sort of person to whom I could safely leave my property. In short Duncan, you must marry; and you must marry a girl who will be a rock of caution and prudence and firmness. A rock to which you can anchor yourself forever.”

Duncan gagged slightly on his coffee. The horrible vision his aunt’s words called up was bad enough; but he had a terrible premonition of the “rock” his aunt had in mind.

Again Aunt Agatha cleared her throat.

“Such a girl,” she declared impressively, “is Elvira Scragg, daughter of my dearest friend. She would be a wonderful wife for any man, but for you Duncan she would be absolutely perfect.”

Duncan’s terrifying premonition had not been wrong. He allowed himself a quick glance at Elvira Scragg. God! Things were far worse than he had imagined. If he wanted any slice of his aunt’s vast estate, and he certainly did, he would have to link himself with this lumpy, streaky-haired, toothsomely grinning creature.

So perturbed was he by this dreadful thought, that he didn’t notice it immediately when his peculiar bouncing and shaking suddenly ceased.

When he did realize that once again he was his normal stable self, he felt immensely relieved. It was difficult enough to face Aunt Agatha and her strategems, without having the thing complicated by an attack of whirling dervish tantrums.

Elvira Scragg noticed his sudden immobility; the sudden cessation of his twitching torso apparently fascinated her.

“Oh,” she said, “is that the end of the Jive Bomber dance?”

“What?” Duncan asked blankly. Then: “Oh yes, that’s the wind-up. There’ll be a slight wait for the next show.”

“I do not intend to be unreasonable,” Aunt Agatha continued, impervious to the interruptions. “I will give you and Elvira a period to become acquainted before you become betrothed. I am sure Duncan, that you appreciate the wisdom of my decision in this matter. Even if you don’t, it does not matter. Aunt Agatha knows best.”

Elvira looked hungrily at Duncan.

“I’m sure she does,” she said in a voice that practically gloated.

Duncan felt suddenly faint. Like a condemned man he slowly began to eat his bacon and eggs...

At the same time, but in another section of the city, a taxi driver-by the name of Mike Rafferty, climbed from his cab before a wooden building which housed his favorite saloon.

Mike Rafferty was feeling in a very glum state of mind as he opened the rear door of the cab to make his usual morning inspection for chance dimes or nickels sometimes dropped on the floor of his cab.

He was feeling glum because the last of his passengers had been a drunken young playboy, who had passed out before Mike could get him to his destination. It had been necessary for him to practically carry the young sot up to his apartment, and the young bum was not a light load.

Grumbling morosely to himself he opened the door. The first thing he saw on the floor of his cab was a small rag doll. He remembered then that the drunken playboy had been holding the doll in his arms when he got into the cab, but in his drunken stupor, he had forgotten to take it with him.

The thing was of no value at all, Mike decided. Just a cheap rag doll the young man had taken a drunken fancy to. The young drunk, he remembered, had placed it carefully on the seat beside him, but it had fallen to the floor.

“Sure,” Mike said aloud, “it must have taken a bouncing around here on the floor of the cab.”

Disgustedly he picked up the doll and entered the saloon. The bartender was wiping the bar with a damp rag when he saw Mike walk in, carrying the rag doll in one hand.

“So you finally reached your second childhood, eh?” he jeered. “Started carrying dolls, have you?”

Mike sat wearily on a bar stool and ordered a drink. He tossed the doll onto the damp bar.

“Some drunken young fool left it in my hack last night,” he explained. He shook his head gloomily. “What’s the young generation comin’ to, I wonder.” He looked more closely at the doll, “Sure, and that’s funny,” he said. “What is?” the bartender said, sliding a stein of, suds along the bar.

“I just noticed,” Mike said, “that this little raggedy doll looks surprising like the young man who left it in my hack.” The bartender bent over and joined in the scrutiny.

“Well,” he said, “the young fool couldn’t’ve looked like much, is all I can say.”

“He didn’t,” Mike said gloomily. “What’re you goin’ to do with it?” the bartender asked.

“Me? What would I be doin’ with it? Throw it out, that’s what, and good riddance.”

The bartender picked up the doll and tossed it carelessly under the bar.

“That’ll save you the trouble,” he said. “My sweeper will throw it into the garbage when he cleans up tonight.”

The two men went on talking and the doll was forgotten.

Neither of them noticed that it had landed under the beer spigot and that the steady drippings from the spigot splashed across its head. In a very few moments the doll had become a soggy beer-saturated mess...

Duncan ate his breakfast without relish. Even though the bacon was succulently crisp and the eggs were smoothly golden, he couldn’t work up much enthusiasm.

His Aunt Agatha and Elvira regarded him unwinkingly as he ate, and that didn’t help his composure particularly.

The ultimatum which his aunt had delivered left him with a limp battered feeling. The gruesome proposition boiled down to one of two things. Marry this repulsive girl, Elvira, and be in the money; spurn her and face the world a pauper.

Duncan shuddered. It was ghastly. He opened his mouth to pop in a piece of toast, but before he could do so, he suddenly hiccoughed, unmistakably, loudly and clearly.

There was a moment of startled silence in the room.

Aunt Agatha looked at him as if he were a bug under a microscope slide.

Duncan mumbled an apology and went back to his food guiltily.

But something was terribly wrong!

The fork fell from his suddenly clumsy fingers. He knocked over a glass of water reaching for it. In the middle of this confusion he hiccoughed again.

Aunt Agatha and Elvira were peering at him in startled amazement.

“What is the matter?” Aunt Agatha demanded.

Duncan hiccoughed gently and the knife fell from his fingers with a strident clatter.

The room seemed to be whirling about before his eyes. There was a dull roaring sound between his ears and a hot ball in his stomach.

The signs were unmistakable.

He was drunk! Absolutely. There could be no doubt of it. In another few minutes he would fall on his face. But he hadn’t taken a drink since he’d climbed out of bed.

What was the matter with him?

Even in his foggy state he realized that there was something monstrously peculiar about the whole situation: How could he have suddenly become blind drunk without so much as having smelled a cork? It was impossible! It was incredible! Still — it was a fact!

He glanced owlishly from Aunt Agatha to Elvira. He noticed with dismay that they were both looking at him in frozen horror.

That wouldn’t do. This wasn’t the way to creep into their hearts and impress them with his sterling virtues.

He’d have to show them the true Duncan. The gentleman and scholar, the bon vivant, the hail-fellow-well-met.

He leaned back in his chair and hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. His eyes shifted lewdly from Aunt Agatha to Elvira.

“What a pair of bags,” he muttered thickly.

“What!” cried Aunt Agatha, rising to her feet.

“No offense, no offense,” Duncan said in a vain attempt at mollification. “Just a slang expression I picked up in the pool room. Neat, isn’t it?”

He also rose to his feet, but he knocked his chair over backwards in the effort. He swayed slightly on the balls of his feet, while the room swayed with him.

At that point, Beetle entered. To his credit he took in the situation in one rapid glance.

Gently, but firmly, he took Duncan’s arm and led him from the room. Duncan’s last memory was sprawling on a comfortable bed and licking his lips contentedly. Then the scene faded into oblivion.

When he opened his eyes again Beetle was standing beside the bed, arms folded, face expressionless and eyes sternly disapproving.

“Whash a matter?” Duncan said thickly.

“Are you feeling better?” Beetle asked frigidly.

“What happened?” Duncan demanded. “How did I get drunk?”

“Is the modus operandi important, sir?” Beetle asked icily.

“Yes,” Duncan said, making an effort to sit up. “How I got drunk is the most important thing of all. I didn’t take a drink. I didn’t even look at a bottle. And still I suddenly pass out. Maybe it was something I ate.”

Beetle sniffed the air significantly. “The aroma you notice, sir,” he said, “is hardly that of bacon or eggs. If I may suggest sir, it is the fumes of strong ale that permeate the room.”

Duncan sniffed. Beetle was right. The room smelled like a brewery. A sudden ghastly thought struck him.

“Aunt Agatha!” he cried. “Is she still here?”

“Yes,” said Beetle. “I succeeded in persuading her that what she witnessed was a violent attack of Septileam Injectorius. I explained that you had been subject to its malign effects for several weeks.”

“What the hell is Septileaum Injec — whatchamecallit?” Duncan demanded anxiously.

“Nothing, as far as I know, sir. It is merely a name I coined on the spur of the moment to meet the emergency.”

“Thank you, Beetle,” Duncan said gratefully.

“You’re quite welcome, sir.”

“You’ve got to help me, Beetle. This thing is driving me crazy. Why should I get drunk when I haven’t been drinking? And do you remember this morning? The way I bounced around like a roulette ball and couldn’t help myself? Something’s happening to me, I tell you. Beetle, you’ve simply got to put the brain to work on this thing, before I go completely potty.”

Beetle frowned faintly and tweaked his nose. Duncan took heart. That was one of the infallible signs that Beetle was thinking. Duncan had great faith in Beetle’s mental equipment. He waited humbly while Beetle turned the matter over.

“It might help, sir,” Beetle said, at last, “if you would tell me in detail what you remember of last night.”

Duncan told everything he remembered talking stimulated his own memory and finally the incident of the Gypsy and the doll came back to him. He had forgotten that completely. Now he unburdened-himself of the entire story, feeling quite sheepish.

But Beetle was not amused. Instead he tweaked his nose again reflectively.

“A doll, was it?” he said softly. “How extremely interesting. And did I understand you to say that the Gypsy warned you not to leave the doll out of your possession?”

“Yes,” Duncan said, “she seemed quite insistent about that.”

“Where is the doll now?” Beetle asked.

“Hang it, I don’t know,” Duncan said. “What difference does it make?”

“Have you ever heard of Voodooism, sir?” Beetle asked.

“Certainly,” Duncan said. “It’s that nonsense they put on for the tourists down in Harlem.” He paused and looked uncertainly at Beetle. “Isn’t it?” he asked weakly.

“While serving Lord Hummerly in Haiti,” Beetle said, tweaking his nose thoughtfully, “it was my pleasure to learn something of the rites of the Voodoo clan. One of the most common means a native employs to rid himself of an enemy is to construct a doll that resembles the intended victim and then stick pins into this doll until the enemy is — ah — no more. Quite interesting, what?”

“Damn it, what’s interesting about it?” Duncan said nervously. “It sounds perfectly silly.”

Beetle smiled and stroked his chin.

There was a mellow, reminiscent light in his eyes.

“I remember as if it were yesterday the case of Lord’s gardener and the native cook. The gardener angered the cook and the cook took a very neat revenge through voodoo. Ah! Those were the days.”

“Well, what happened?” demanded Duncan. He felt a touch of perspiration on his forehead.

“Nothing sensational,” Beetle said. “The gardener, poor chap, died a raving madman a week or so later. I remember to this day how distressed m’Lord was over the whole affair. You see, this gardener was the only fellow in the neighborhood who could make tulips grow in that climate. Naturally, he was missed.”

“Naturally,” Duncan croaked.

“Do you see,” Beetle smiled, “why I think it is rather necessary that we learn the whereabouts of this doll the Gypsy gave you. If it is a true voodoo doll the situation is rather serious. For anything that happens to the doll will likewise happen to you.”

“Oh,” groaned Duncan. “This is terrible. Why did she give it to me anyway?”

Beetle shrugged.

“Gypsies have a rather nasty sense of humor, sir. Of course, had you kept the doll in your possession, nothing could have harmed you. Since you have lost the doll you are in a somewhat serious predicament.”

“Well, we’ve got to find it,” Duncan said desperately. “The last thing I remember about last night is getting into a cab.”

“Ah!” Beetle cried. “You see it is working already. The bouncing, jostling sensation that affected you this morning was undoubtedly a result of the doll’s bouncing about in the rear of the cab. This narrows down our field of speculation quite considerably. Now in what club did you encounter this Gypsy? I think it expedient that we contact her without delay. Really, I find this problem quite absorbing.” Duncan was feeling quite sick. The thought of a dreadful doll, his alter ego, lost in the wide city where it could be stepped on, kicked around, torn apart or thrown into the lake, was unnerving. The unnerving thought was that whatever happened to the doll would happen to him. Some brat might pick it up and pull the stuffings out of it!

He lay back weakly, while his insides performed a complete flip-flop. A sheen of perspiration beaded his forehead.

“It was at the Scimitar club,” he said faintly. “And for God’s sake hurry!”

“Righto, sir. Cheerio.”

With that Beetle left.

For the next hour Duncan tossed from one side of the bed to the other, his imagination running riot. Every possible assault and indignity that could be perpetrated on the human frame leaped before his mind’s eye, and was only banished by the thought of some more horrifying possibility.

Supposing a car ran over the doll!

He could almost feel the pressure on his chest and for several seconds he could hardly breathe. Or maybe someone, would decide to use the doll for a pin cushion!

This anguishing idea was replaced by the thought of what would happen to him if the doll were discarded into a garbage can somewhere.

When Beetle finally returned Duncan was bathed in a pool of nervous perspiration, and his body was limply exhausted. Beetle’s first remarks did not cheer him.

“It’s very odd, sir, but the Gypsy seems to have disappeared,” he said. “No trace of the woman at all. That complicates matters a bit. Incidentally, your aunt and the young lady are still waiting in the sitting room. Have you any word for them?”

“Nothing printable,” Duncan muttered. “We’ve got to do something about this—” He broke off suddenly.

“What is it, sir?”

“Beetle,” Duncan cried in a strangled voice. “Something is happening to me.”

“Excellent,” Beetle beamed. “Perhaps the symptoms will afford a clue as to the whereabouts of the doll.”

Duncan unknotted his tie and opened his collar.

“I’m getting warm,” he gasped. “No! I’m getting hot! All over. Do something!”

Beetle tweaked his nose agitatedly.

“That is a rather vague symptom,” he pointed out. “Couldn’t you give me something more definite?”

“I’m starting to roast!” Duncan howled. “What more do you want? A barbecued arm with salt and pepper?” With sudden decision Beetle reached for the phone.

“I think I have something,” he said. “Operator, will you give me the fire department, please.”

Duncan swallowed nervously.

“Fire Marshal?” Beetle inquired pleasantly, a moment later. “How do you do, sir. This is the residence of Duncan Digit. What? No, we do not have a fire here. Yes, that is fortunate.”

“Cut out the play-by-play description,” Duncan shouted.”

Beetle looked coldly at Duncan and then turned back to the receiver. “Perhaps you can tell me, sir, if there have been any fires reported within the last few moments. It is rather urgent. Yes, I’ll wait.”

“What did he say?” Duncan yelled. His shirt was hanging damply to his shoulders and he felt as if he were sitting on a griddle.

“He said,” Beetle replied slowly, “that he would find out. Compose yourself, sir.” He turned back to the receiver. “Yes? A tavern? Will you repeat that address, please? Thank you, I have it. Thank you, very much.”

He hung up.

“What’s the dope?” Duncan demanded.

“A tavern sent in an alarm not three minutes ago,” Beetle said triumphantly. “This is capital, sir. Your drunken orgy this morning is now understandable. Somehow, the doll was taken to a tavern. There it became saturated with ale — a poor grade, I might add — and your subsequent inebriation was the result. Now that tavern is burning to the ground. It is a wooden frame and I understand that it is going quite rapidly. That accounts for your uncomfortable feeling at the moment.

Can’t you see how undeniably logical the chain of events is, sir?”

“Damn the logic,” Duncan shouted. “What’s going to happen to me when that infernal doll goes up in smoke?” Beetle cleared his throat delicately. “Hasn’t it always been your wish to be cremated, sir?”

Duncan leaped from the bed and struggled into his coat.

“Yes, damn it,” he said, “but not until I’m dead.”

“What are your plans, sir? Do you wish a change of clothing? A light snack, perhaps.”

“Hell no,” Duncan exploded. “I’m going to save that doll if I have to become a one-man fire department. And you’re coming with me. You’ve got the address. Snap into it.”

He tore out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the sitting room like a race horse. Aunt Agatha and Elvira leaped to their feet as he burst into the room.

“Where are you going?” Aunt Agatha demanded shrilly. “I demand that you remain here. I forbid you to leave. Your manners are positively barbarous. Elvira has been waiting two hours to talk to you and now you are trying to rush out of the house like a madman. I won’t have it, I say. I refuse to be treated like a sack of ashes.”

Duncan continued his-sprint for the door. Over his shoulder he shouted: “That goes for me, too!”

He practically flew down the three flights of steps to the street. Beetle was at his heels, panting but grim.

“A cab! A cab!” Duncan shouted. He waved wildly at the whizzing traffic. Even in the cold spring air Duncan was as warm as toast — burnt toast. “If we don’t get a cab soon, it’ll be too late,” he moaned.

As if in answer to prayer a Yellow Cab noticed his frantic gestures and slashed over to the curb with a shrieking wail from protesting brakes.

“Hop in, buddy,” the cabby snapped.

Duncan jumped into the cab and dragged Beetle after him. Beetle gave the driver the address. It was at the lower end of town and a good distance away.

“We would appreciate it,” Beetle said, settling back comfortably, “if you take the shortest route. We are in somewhat of a hurry. However, I shouldn’t advise you to drive recklessly.”

Duncan grabbed the cabby by the shoulder before he released the clutch.

“Listen, Buddy,” he said tensely, “I don’t care how you drive but get us there in three minutes and it’ll be worth a hundred bucks to you. I’ll take care of any tickets you get for speeding.”

“For a hundred bucks I’d take you to Mars,” the driver yelled over his shoulder. “But don’t worry about tickets for speeding. Any tickets we get will be for flying too low!”

The cab shot away from the curb like a scorched rabbit. Horns blasted angrily as the cab sliced through the traffic like a broken field runner and streaked down the left side of the street through a red light and onto the boulevard.

Beetle covered his eyes with his hands and sank against the cushions. The ride was a nightmare. Over safety islands, through red lights, around redfaced policemen, the cab scurried across the town like something inspired from Dante’s Inferno.

And Duncan continued to sweat. As the minutes passed his condition grew worse. Any minute he expected blisters to start popping out on the back of his neck.

Finally the cab swung off the boulevard, raced down a side street and came to a shuddering stop before an intersection that had been roped off by the fire department.

“Close as I can get,” the cabby panted.

“Close enough,” Duncan snapped. He kicked open the door of the cab and raced toward the roped-off crowd that was watching the dramatic and fiery destruction of the wooden frame building that housed the tavern.

Using his elbows, his knees and his voice, Duncan jammed and fought his way to the front of the line, but there he was stopped by a shouting cop, who placed a heavy hand on his chest and shoved him backward.

“We got our orders,” he snarled. “Nobody goes through and that means you, mister.”

“Oh, yeah?” Duncan shouted.

With all his strength he kicked the cop squarely in the shins. The cop doubled over with an agonized bellow and Duncan slipped under the rope and sprinted across the cleared area that surrounded the burning building.

The heat was intense. In fact, it would have been unbearable had not Duncan been practically burning up himself. As it was, he hardly noticed the blasts of scorching air that billowed against his face and body.

He dashed through the raging flames that forked tongue-like from the blazing interior and staggered into the main room of the tavern. Instinct led him unerringly through the inferno to the bar. He knew the doll must be there, for it couldn’t have made him drunk unless it was close to the liquor supply—

Not liquor. Ale!

He clambered over the charred and burning bar and dropped behind it. Choking and blinded he fell to his knees and crawled toward the ale tape. His hands swept over the floor in circles as he inched painfully forward. Then a roaring draft of air swept along the bar blowing the dense billowing smoke away, and in that sudden instant of vision Duncan saw what he was looking for.

The doll, badly scorched and smouldering was within inches of him. It took him only an instant to reach it and stuff it into his shirt.

Then he staggered to his feet. He realized he was only barely in time. The heavy beams of the ceiling were already sagging dangerously. In another twenty seconds the whole building would probably give way with a crash.

He was staggering toward the door when he heard a faint sound that stopped him in his tracks. Turning he peered into the swirling smoke and leaping flames.

In the corner of the room a man was lying on his stomach, helplessly attempting to crawl to his knees. It was his moan that Duncan had heard. The man was huge and fat and a white apron he was wearing identified him as the bartender.

Duncan lurched to the man’s side, knelt and hoisted him to his shoulder. It took all of his waning strength to struggle to his feet. Swaying perilously he moved toward the door, blinded by the acrid smoke and the perspiration that poured from his forehead.

As he reached the doorway, he heard the timbers of the ceiling give way with a tremendous rending crash. A rush of scorching air swept over him, and long, greedily licking flames roared with suddenly increased fury about him.

With his last rush of strength he charged through the doorway and fell into the cleared area that surrounded the building. He didn’t hear the building crash; he didn’t hear the sudden sharp roar from the crowd as they saw him stagger from the blazing doorway; he didn’t hear the popping of flashlight bulbs as quick-thinking photographers recorded for posterity the evidence of his heroism.

He heard none of this, saw none of this. For he was completely out...

Three days later, swathed in bandages, Duncan was able to sit up in his comfortable bedroom. Scattered about the floor were dozens of papers carrying the story, complete with pictures of his daring rescue.

Duncan was the city’s hero. If an election had been held that week Duncan could have been elected Mayor.

Aunt Agatha tip-toed cautiously into the room and seeing that he was sitting up, hurried to his side.

“My dear boy,” she cried solicitously, “are you feeling better? Is there something I can do for you? Something I can bring you?”

“Nothing at all,” Duncan said. “Except for a general fricasseed feeling, I’m all right.”

“That’s splendid,” Aunt Agatha said enthusiastically, “because I want to talk to you about a very important matter. I’ve definitely decided that you are just the type to handle all of my affairs. Your heroism has proven your true worth beyond a doubt.”

Duncan beamed through the network of bandages that swathed his face. Things couldn’t be better.

“But,” Aunt Agatha said, “I haven’t changed my mind about the necessity of choosing a suitable matrimonial partner for you. Elvira is still my choice and when you are well you will have the opportunity to become better acquainted with the dear girl. I’m sure you’ll agree with me then that she will make an ideal mate for you.”

Duncan’s face frowned beneath the maze of bandages. Things couldn’t be worse! Had he gone through all of this only to wind up tied to Elvira for life. If he had known that was in store for him he would have stayed in the burning tavern. At least, he thought darkly, that wouldn’t have been permanent.

A discreet knock sounded on the door then and, an instant later, Beetle entered, suave and imperturbable as always. With him was Elvira Scragg. She was beaming idiotically.

“Elvira,” Aunt Agatha said, “Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Beetle took Elvira’s hand and smiled at Aunt Agatha.

“Elvira and I,” he said succinctly, “have been to the City Hall. There a brief but touching service was performed which made One where once had been Two. In short, Elvira and I were married this morning. With both of us it was love at first sight.”

With a sad bow he turned to Duncan. “As much as I regret the necessity,” he said, “I must ask you to accept my resignation.”

“Elvira!” Aunt Agatha shrieked. “It isn’t true. It can’t be true.”

“But it is,” Elvira said dreamily. “It was love at first sight — just like Beetle says. He’s wonderful!”

Duncan leaned back against his pillow with a contented sigh. Things couldn’t be better. Not in a million, years. This removed for all time the menace of Elvira, and it probably would have an excellent effect on his aunt. It would prove to her the inadvisability of amateur match-making.

A half hour later Beetle said goodbye to Duncan. Aunt Agatha was in her room with a bottle of smelling salts, prostrated.

“Is there anything I can do before I leave?” Beetle asked.

“Not a thing,” Duncan, said. “Oh, there is something at that.” He dug into the covers of his bed and pulled out the ragged, scorched doll. “This blamed thing has still got me worried. I might lose it again. I’m not the responsible type, you know. So I wish you’d keep it for me. With you it will be safe and I’ll have a little peace of mind.”

“Certainly, sir.” Beetle took the doll and put it carefully in his pocket. “I shall keep it close to me always. Goodbye, sir.”

Duncan watched him leave with regret. Good man, Beetle, hard to find another like him. He felt relieved that Beetle had the custody of that damned doll. Beetle wasn’t the type to shirk a responsibility like that. If he said he’d keep it with him, he’d keep it with him. All the time. That night Duncan woke from a sound sleep with a start. For a moment he was at a loss to determine what had awakened him. His face felt hot and flushed. It was a most peculiar and disturbing sensation.

He switched on the light and picked up the hand mirror from his night table. For an instant he couldn’t believe his eyes.

He was blushing!

Then as understanding dawned on him he chuckled to himself and flicked off the light. After all, Beetle was just sticking to his word. Good fellow, Beetle.

Anyway, honeymoons didn’t last forever.

When Destiny Dealt

First published in Fantastic Adventures, September 1942.

On the lane leading to the main entrance of Morris Bros. Mammoth Circus there was a small tattered tent in front of which crouched an incredibly aged, wrinkled and dirty crone.

Marie Carillo noticed the tent and the woman as she was returning from her afternoon walk. She stopped and turned to the sullen, powerfully built young man who was walking beside her.

“Look, Manrico,” she said, a note of surprise in her voice, “this tent and the old hag were not here when we walked by an hour ago. She is not part of the circus, is she?”

The young man glanced at the tent without curiosity. His brown face was impassive, but when he looked back to the girl at his side his flashing eyes betrayed his inner longing.

“What does it matter?” he murmured. “When we have only an hour a day together must we waste it in idle speculation?”

The girl glanced about nervously. “Such talk is dangerous, Manrico. Supposing someone should hear you? My husband, perhaps.”

“Your husband is a fool.” Manrico spoke passionately. “He doesn’t know the meaning of love. When I have you I will show you how a man should love a woman.”

“Please,” Marie Carillo said breathlessly. “You mustn’t speak of such things. My husband will never let me go. I am afraid, even now, that he is becoming suspicious of us. If he does he will discharge you from our act.” Manrico laughed contemptuously. “The Laughing Carillos would be finished then,” he sneered. “Where could he find another trapeze artist to work with him? I stay only to be near you, my sweet.”

The couple had paused before the small tent which had provoked their discussion and the wrinkled old crone was regarding them with steady, unwinking brown eyes.

They were an attractive pair, she as slim and graceful as he was powerful and large, and the old woman nodded her head slowly as she appraised them. Years of work on high trapezes had given their bodies a fluidity and grace that was evident in their every action. He wore a white silk shirt, open at the throat, and the perfect muscles of his torso rippled under the light covering each time he moved his arms. The girl wore a mannish coat over her slim square shoulders, and except for the darkness of her coloring she might have been another Diana, tall, proudly straight and superbly beautiful.

The old crone drew a deck of cards from her dirty red and white wrapper and grinned toothlessly at the couple standing before her tent.

“Your destiny is in the cards,” she mumbled. “Death, love, hate and birth all reveal their secrets in the pattern of the cards.”

Manrico looked down at the woman in irritation.

“Shut up, you old hag,” he snapped.

“Please, Manrico, let us have our fortunes told by the old woman,” Marie said. She smiled at him coaxingly. “Please, it would make me happy.”

“All right,” Manrico sighed. He turned to the old woman, who had scrambled to her feet at Marie’s words.

“The Senora wishes her fortune told,” he said. “We do not have much time.”

The ancient seer grinned in acquiescence. With a clumsy parody of a bow she proceeded them into the small hot tent. She seated herself behind a table in the center of the tent and motioned them to take seats on the opposite side.

“This is a great deal of foolishness,” Manrico said.

Marie gripped his arm suddenly. She pointed to the cards the woman was spreading over the table.

“Look,” she whispered. “The backs of the cards—”

“What is so remarkable?”

“The clown faces on the backs of the cards,” Marie said, a little breathlessly. “Some of the faces are laughing, some are crying—”

The old crone looked up at Marie.

“That is life. Some cry, some laugh,” she said.

“But—”

“My sweet,” Manrico said irritably, “you are amazed at the clowns. Why? Because we wear clown suits during our performance?”

“Yes. That is why. It seems — somehow peculiar. As if these cards were really made for us.”

“Nonsense,” Manrico said. “They are an ordinary deck of cards. You could buy a thousand packs like them within fifty feet of this tent.”

The old crone smiled at his words and shook her head, almost sadly. She drew a card from the deck and shoved it toward the girl.

Marie studied the card and a flush of excitement stained her cheeks. The picture on the back of the card was that of a beautiful girl, head thrown back, hair streaming. And there was a small heart-shaped beauty mark under her left eye.

“Manrico,” she whispered tensely. “This girl on the picture — it is me!” Her hand strayed automatically to her cheeks and her fingers wonderingly touched the small, heart-shaped birth mark under her own left eye.

Manrico stared at the card for a long moment and then he glanced at Marie. There was a worried look in his eye and a dark frown clouded his features.

“It is some trick,” he growled uneasily. He turned angrily to the old crone. “Where did you get that picture?”

The old woman grinned toothlessly and shrugged her shapeless shoulders. She began a rapid shuffling of the cards, her dirty, claw-like fingers moving with flashing dexterity.

Marie watched the cards anxiously and there was a strange excitement in her eyes.

“I feel so strange,” she whispered to Manrico. “Something inside me seems to be crying out a warning.”

The woman dealt the cards rapidly into three piles, faces up. Then she assembled them into a geometric pattern on the table, mumbling strange, unintelligible words to herself as she did so.

When all the cards were arranged the woman stared at them for a long minute and then shook her head worriedly and scooped them up in her gnarled old hands.

“No, no,” she muttered. “It cannot be.”

“What’s the matter?” Marie demanded.

The woman didn’t answer. She shook her head from side to side and began redistributing them again. When she had completed the pattern the second time she looked from Manrico to Marie and there was a fearful doubt in her eyes.

“It is the same,” she said, in a voice that was little more than a croak. “There can be no mistake. The cards of destiny do not lie. There is blackness ahead.”

“What does that mean?” Marie asked.

The crone swayed from side to side and her voice was barely a croon as she muttered, “Death, death.”

Manrico stood up angrily.

“Are you trying to frighten the Señora?” he cried.

“Señora?” the old woman repeated. A sharp bright light glinted in her shifting eyes. “You are married?” she demanded of Marie.

“Yes.”

“To him?” she indicated Manrico with a long bony finger.

Marie’s cheeks grew hot.

“No.”

“But you are lovers?”

Manrico took Marie’s arm. “Come,” he said. “This old fool talks too much.”

“No,” Marie said. “I want to hear what she has to say.”

“The cards indicate another man,” the crone said. “A tall fair man. For him, is the blackness.”

Marie drew a sharp breath. “Tony!” she whispered.

“He will die. His time is soon. The blackness is near.”

Marie shivered, although the tent was uncomfortably warm.

“I–I think we must go,” she whispered to Manrico.

But Manrico’s cheeks were now flushed with excitement.

“Not yet,” he said sharply. “This was your idea. Now we will hear her out. What else is there in the cards, mother?”

Again there was doubt visible on the old woman’s withered face.

“It is not all clear,” she murmured.

“What is there for the Senora and me?” Manrico persisted.

“Love.”

“And life?” Manrico demanded.

“It is not clear,” the old woman mumbled. She rocked from side to side and ruffled the cards with uncertain fingers.

Manrico mopped his damp brow, noticing as he did so, that his hands were trembling.

“Will — the other man die first?” he asked.

The old woman nodded emphatically.

Manrico sat down and a flood of relief surged through him. His hand found Marie’s and he pressed it tightly.

“And for us?” he asked again.

“Each other’s arms,” the crone replied. “Until death separates you.”

As the woman spoke she gathered the cards together and stood up. Manrico led Marie from the tent and then turned to pay the old woman, but she waved him away, almost angrily.

Manrico shrugged and put the money back in his pocket. As they walked toward the main gate of the circus they said little to each other. Manrico’s thoughts were boiling furiously and beneath his impassive exterior he was raging with repressed excitement.

When they passed the gate and entered the grounds of the circus he stopped and took Marie’s shoulders in his powerful hands.

“You heard what she said?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Marie answered, “I heard.”

“Then why must we wait any longer? He is going to die; that old witch said so. There is no reason to stay with him. You must tell him now that you are leaving him.”

His hands dug into the girl’s shoulders and his eyes blazed into hers with an almost hypnotic force.

“Maybe the old woman was lying,” Marie said desperately.

“She knew of Tony,” Manrico said harshly. “She knew of us. The card with your likeness is proof of her powers. Maybe she’s in league with the Black One, but I’d gamble my soul that she has told us the truth.”

“All right, Manrico,” Marie said, a little breathlessly. “I–I will go to him and tell him that I am leaving. But you must come with me. I cannot face him alone.”

“I will come with you,” Manrico said savagely. “He is in his tent now, preparing for our act tonight.”

He took the girl’s arm and strode toward a long line of performers’ tents, almost dragging the girl in his haste. At a tent with an insignia of three laughing clowns stitched to the main flap, he halted.

“He is inside,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”

“Manrico, I am afraid.”

“You fool!” Manrico burst out savagely.

He jerked aside the flap of the tent and shoved the girl forward.

“We have wasted enough time as it is. This thing must be done now or not at all.”

The girl stepped into the tent, her face white and strained. Manrico followed her.

At a littered dressing table in the tent, a tall, blond man was applying make-up. He looked around at Marie and Manrico.

“You’ve been gone quite a while,” he said. “We’re due for the Grand March in another hour, you know.”

“I know,” Marie said. She twisted her hands together anxiously and glanced up at Manrico in mute appeal, but she received no comfort from his stony, impassive face.

“There’s something I want to tell you, Tony,” she said.

Tony, her husband, turned back to his dressing table and inspected his lean face in the mirror. He had applied the white paint in an inch-wide streak about his mouth and it lent a ludicrous appearance to his pale, finely drawn face.

“We haven’t time to talk,” he said. “You can tell me later.”

He stood up from the table and straightened the blouse of the baggy clown suit he was wearing.

“No,” Marie said, “I can’t tell you later. You must listen now.”

Her husband turned and faced her and his eyes moved slowly from her to Manrico. There was a lurking fear in his eyes, now. The subconscious, instinctive fear of a man who has steeled himself for grief but who has a horrible dread of its arrival.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Manrico and I love each other,” Marie said quietly. “I intend to marry him. You must give me my freedom.” There was a complete and terrible silence in the room and her words seemed to echo endlessly, beating against the brains of the three people in the tent.

Her husband stared wildly at her and his eyes were black and hot against the whiteness of his face. He started to speak but no words passed his lips. His mouth twisted with his effort and the line of white grease paint spread and writhed in a pitifully comical fashion.

Manrico stood with his arms folded over his deep chest, his face expressionless.

“Well,” Marie said, a touch of irritation in her voice, “aren’t you going to say something?”

Her husband seemed not to hear the words. He sank slowly down on the stool before the dressing table, and his shapeless clown suit seemed to collapse about his shoulders. His features twisted as if he were in physical pain. He said slowly, “I love you, Marie.”

“If you do,” Marie said, “you must want me to be happy. And I love Manrico. I can’t be happy without him. You must let me go.”

“No,” he said. His voice was strained and harsh. “No.”

Marie smiled slightly. His pain and helplessness at the prospect of losing her increased her confidence and gave her a feeling of power.

She said, “You can’t keep me. I didn’t know the meaning of love when married you. I know now that I never loved you, not even for a day.” She was slightly shocked at hearing her own words, for she realized that she was saying things with the deliberate intention of hurting him.

He looked at her with haggard, pleading eyes.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Marie,” he said hoarsely.

“She knows perfectly well what she’s saying,” Manrico said coldly. “She is in love with me and I am in love with her. We have been, for over a year. And nothing is going to keep us apart.”

“I will not let you go,” Tony said dully. He seemed as a man in a trance. His powerful hands were twisted together until the knuckles gleamed whitely in the semi-darkness of the tent.

“I will not let you go,” he repeated.

Manrico’s face reddened in anger.

“This is not the twelfth century,” he said stormily. “Marie is not your slave.”

Tony did not seem to hear. His head was bowed and his face was as hard as carved wood.

“There’s no use talking,” Marie said, turning helplessly to Manrico.

Manrico put his arm around her waist and led her to the tent flap. He glanced back at Tony and saw that he was reaching blindly, automatically, for a bottle of whisky on the dressing table.

He smiled grimly and followed Marie from the tent. They walked a dozen yards in silence, and Manrico watched Marie closely, a speculative, musing smile on his lips.

Finally he said, “Well, where does this leave us?”

Marie shook her head impatiently.

“I don’t know. He’s in one of his moods. Nothing can ever change him now.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Manrico said cryptically.

“You don’t know him as I do,” Marie said. “His will is like iron. Oh, I don’t know what to think or do.”

Manrico glanced about to make sure there was no one within earshot. Satisfied, he turned to Marie and his smile was not pleasant.

“You are wrong when you say that nothing will change Tony,” he said. He looked steadily into the girl’s eyes and the grim smile on his face faded to a cruel determination. “Death will change him.”

“Manrico!” Marie gasped.

“Yes, death!” Manrico said softly. “While he lives he will always stand between us. He must die! Have you forgotten? His death was foretold in our cards. It makes no difference whether it occurs tonight or twenty years from now. That is destiny. Only to us does it make a difference. Whether we will be together in happiness or split apart forever by his selfishness depends on whether he lives or dies.”

“But it isn’t right,” Marie protested fearfully. “It would be mur—”

“Don’t say it, sweet,” Manrico said softly. “We will only be fulfilling the designs of destiny. Didn’t the cards promise us each other’s arms until death separated us? We cannot fulfil that fate until he is forever out of the way.”

“It’s dangerous. Something might—”

“There’s no element of danger in the plan I have figured out. Tonight there will be an accident during the act. A very unfortunate accident that will cost Tony Carillo his life. It will be as simple as falling off a high trapeze,” he added with grim humor.

“How can you be sure this ‘accident’ will take place?”

Manrico smiled faintly.

“Leave that to me. In our first act he leaves his trapeze, swings through the air and I catch him with a hand-lock, you remember?”

“Yes. In that exchange I catch his trapeze when he leaves it. But how does the ‘accident’ happen?”

“Simple. I do not catch Tony. I miss his hands by just a little bit. It is very unfortunate. Everyone is very sorry. But Tony is falling to the ground and it is too late to do anything about it.”

“Won’t someone suspect?”

“Not likely. As we left his tent I noticed that he was about to take a drink. He might take two or three. He is shocked, nervous. People will notice this and when he falls they will decide that he made the mistake of taking too much drink. If no one happens to notice that he has been drinking, we can remind them of it. The plan is flawless.”

Marie turned her face away and a tremor passed over her.

“I am afraid,” she whispered. “Are you sure this is the right thing we are doing?”

“It is the only thing we can do, my sweet,” Manrico assured her passionately. “Hurry, now, and dress. We have only a short time.”

An hour later, the vast main tent was completely filled with a festive crowd. Outside, the stars were visible as a billion pin-pricks of silver light against the mighty black canopy of the sky.

Manrico stood with Marie under the main archway, waiting to file into the center ring. Tony stood a little apart from them, silent and haggard. Not once did he so much as glance at them.

Manrico noticed with satisfaction the flushed face and burning, feverish eyes. Tony had been drinking.

Suddenly the band struck up the march which was their cue. Their appearance was greeted with cheers and laughter from the well-packed stands. Manrico smiled thinly beneath his paint. A clown suit might mean fun and comedy to the spectators but they didn’t realize how deceptive were the costumes and grease paint of the Laughing Carillos this night.

The master of ceremonies introduced them lavishly, and then they were ascending the ladders that led to the trapezes, high above the heads of the crowd, in the tip-top peak of the big top.

Tony and Marie ascended one side and Manrico went up alone. When he reached his platform he tested the trapeze carefully. He glanced down and saw that the net was being removed. That was part of the act. He smiled. Tony would have a nice straight drop — onto the hard-baked earth.

The drums of the band were rumbling a spine-tingling crescendo and the cries of the crowd had faded to a tense, excited murmur.

Manrico looked and saw that Marie had reached her platform which was a dozen feet above Tony’s. He waved to her and he could see her white smile.

Tony’s face was set in rigid lines, completely devoid of expression. Manrico experienced a grim pleasure from the thought of how that expressionless face would change and writhe when it started downward...

After a last check of the trapeze ropes, Manrico swung out into the air. Marie and Tony both stepped from their platforms and swung in sweeping arcs toward him — Marie a dozen feet above his head, Tony exactly parallel.

They swung back and forth gathering momentum while the band below built a pulse-quickening pillar of sound beneath them. Their first maneuver was actually their climax for it was the most spectacular in their repertoire.

Manrico caught Tony and Marie somersaulted to the trapeze vacated by Tony — that was the trick. It required perfect timing and precision.

Manrico smiled as he swung higher and higher. There was no danger for him in this maneuver. Ordinarily he caught Tony. Tonight, it was even simpler — for he wasn’t going to catch Tony.

Two more swings and then Tony would be sailing through the air, hands extended, grasping—

What would he think as he missed and plummeted downward?

There wouldn’t be time for thought, Manrico knew.

He fell backwards and hung by his knees as he completed the first swing. Above him he could see Marie arcing gracefully downward. Her long, slender body streamed through the air, a vibrant, beautiful poem of motion.

Manrico completed his second swing and his eyes flashed the cue to Marie and Tony. They both nodded imperceptibly and he knew that they were ready.

Tony swung forward to meet him, hanging by his hands. Manrico could see his face clearly. And he saw that Tony was smiling. Smiling exultantly, triumphantly, happily.

Manrico had no time for thought for at that same instant Tony’s hands released the trapeze bar — and with a flash of instinctive reckoning Manrico knew that Tony had released the bar a split second too soon, six feet before he should have!

And he was not flying toward Manrico’s outstretched hands as he should have been! He was falling swiftly and certainly to the hard-baked earth a hundred and fifty feet below. And the triumphant, exultant smile was radiant on his face as he dropped.

It happened too quickly for thought. But quicker than thought were Manrico’s instinctive reflexes. And even as Tony started to fall, his horrified eyes flashed up to Marie’s trapeze and a shout of warning clawed at his throat.

For Marie had left her trapeze and was dropping in a graceful, soaring arc to Tony’s trapeze — Tony’s trapeze which his deliberate fall had thrown six feet out of place.

The full import of Tony’s act crashed into Manrico’s brain with the speed of light. There was no time to think, less in which to act.

Marie was falling through the air — and Tony’s trapeze was swinging tantalizingly away from her clawing fingers.

With cat-like quickness Manrico grabbed his trapeze bar with one hand, slipped his knees from the bar and swung forward in a desperate lunge.

His free hand caught Marie about the waist as she hurtled by — and his other hand tore away from the trapeze with a savage wrench.

Marie’s shrill scream beat at his ears and her arms clutched about his waist as they fell.

The cards had not lied.

They were to have each other’s arms until death parted them.

And Manrico had been wrong about one thing. There was time to think on the way down.

Goddess of the Fifth Plane

First published in Fantastic Adventures, September 1942.

Chapter I

The valet entered the bedroom quietly and, after a glance at the young man who lay sleeping there, tip-toed to the window and adjusted the Venetian blinds.

Slanting bars of afternoon sunlight poured into the room, falling across the face of the sleeper.

The valet watched hopefully, but as the young man continued to sleep peacefully, he sighed and walked to the side of the bed.

“It’s five o’clock, sir,” he said, bending over and shaking the young man’s shoulder.

Vance Cameron opened his eyes sleepily and yawned.

“Five o’clock, eh?” he muttered. He ran a hand tiredly through his brown, rumpled hair and hoisted himself on one elbow. After a glance at the clock on the night table, he yawned again and swung his legs out of the bed. He grinned up at his valet who was watching him impassively.

“I haven’t slept this late in years,” he said. “I can hardly believe it. I’ll be completely spoiled when this furlough is over.”

He stood up and stretched luxuriously.

“I’ll have a bath and a bite to eat, then maybe I’ll feel like a human being again.”

“Certainly, sir.” The valet smiled and started for the door.

Vance removed his pajama top, revealing a pair of wide, heavily muscled shoulders that rose like a wedge from lean, flat hips and stomach. He was tall and proportionately built. His face was lean, tanned and serious, but his gray eyes were sparklingly alive and there was humor in the slight upward twist of his lips.

At the door the valet paused.

“I forgot to ask you, sir, what you wished done with the picture?”

Vance looked at him in slight surprise.

“What picture?” he asked.

An expression of doubt appeared on the valet’s face.

“Why, the picture in the living room, sir. I thought — I assumed that you brought it in with you this morning. It was there when I went in to straighten up.”

Vance shook his head.

“Nope, it’s not mine. Maybe it was delivered by mistake.”

“I don’t think so, sir. That is, I hardly see how it could have been. An expressman would have rung the bell. It isn’t likely that someone would have just walked in and left the picture there. Besides it’s quite a large picture.”

“Hmmm,” Vance said. “The mystery deepens, doesn’t it? Well, we’ll just have to wait until someone comes around and claims it. In the meantime, I’m more interested in something to eat than I am in a mysterious picture. I’ll have a look at the thing when I’ve had my shower, but you get started on breakfast, or rather supper.”

“Certainly, sir,” his valet said. He left the room quietly.

Fifteen minutes later, Vance, showered and shaved, and dressed in a casually fitting tweed suit, strolled into the littered living room of his apartment.

That room reflected his personality more definitely than any other in the apartment. In it were bric-a-brac and curios collected from the odd corners of the world in his travels. Gourds and weapons from the lost civilization of the Incas, tiny, bejeweled daggers from Persia, lamps from China, grotesque voodoo dolls from Haiti — all of these and many more, representing the odd and the strange from almost every nation of the globe, were scattered about the room, creating a cosmopolitan atmosphere of unbelievable weirdness.

Vance Cameron had trod the highways of the world for ten years, inquisitively poking his head into the darkest corners of every land. And when the vultures from Berlin had swept over London in those dark September days, Vance had begun his greatest adventure — as a pilot in the grimly battling R.A.F.

This was his first furlough in more than two years of sky battling. As he stood in the center of his bizarre living room, he thought ironically that he deserved a little peace and quiet and contentment.

But he obviously wasn’t going to get it. Not, at least, until he had straightened out the mystery of the picture his valet had mentioned.

The picture had caught and held his eye the moment he entered the room. He was standing now facing it, studying its detail and composition carefully.

The painting was framed in heavy, gleamingly black wood and was leaning against the wall at a slight angle.

Vance lit a cigarette and frowned thoughtfully. Although he was no artist, he could appreciate that the painting was a marvelous piece of work, life-like, vivid and captivating.

The dominant figure on the canvas was a girl. She had been painted life-size, and Vance realized that it would have been an artistic crime to have minimized her dimensions.

She was tall and slender with a glorious halo of blonde hair that waved back from her pale, high forehead and fell ripplingly to her shoulders. Her eyes were great and wide and strangely troubled. The clothes that partly concealed her slim body were barbaric and strange, but they only enhanced her glorious, strangely compelling beauty.

Her hand was resting lightly on the golden mane of a great beast that resembled a lion, except for the blunt, curling horns that sprang from its magnificent head.

There was a quality of noble grandeur about the beast. Great liquid eyes stared solemnly, almost questioningly at Vance, and the majestic head was proudly raised, as if responding to the light touch of the girl’s hand.

Vance stared long and thoughtfully at the painting. There was a feeling, a quality, a reality to the picture that disturbed him strangely.

He was still standing before the barbaric painting when his valet entered.

“Your supper is ready, sir,” he said.

Vance didn’t answer and the valet cleared his throat.

“Supper, sir.”

Vance started slightly. He turned, looked at his valet as if he were seeing him for the first time.

“Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. He shook his head as if trying to shake off a reluctant memory. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. The painting was so beautiful and so strange that he must have lost himself in contemplation.

He ate supper, paying little attention to what he was putting in his mouth. There was a peculiar excitement running through his veins. He wanted to study the mysterious picture, examine it carefully and thoroughly, but somehow he felt as if he shouldn’t.

He was able to smile a little at himself for that idea. He felt curiously excited and unsettled. The sensation was not exactly a novel one, for it had always come to him when he’d seen Messerschmitts diving at him out of the blinding sun, or when he was on perilous reconnaissance flights over Berlin. It was not fear, but rather a quickening of his perceptions, an expectation and invitation to danger.

But why such a sensation should come to him now was a question he was unable to answer.

He finished his supper and returned to the living room. It was almost dark now, and leaping shadows danced in the corners of the room. Vance turned on a few soft lights.

In the pale illumination the bizarrely furnished room was indescribably beautiful, but the most compelling of all the objects was the life-size painting of the girl and the mighty golden beast that stood at her side like a devoted dog.

Vance walked slowly toward the picture and stopped within a few feet of it. For several minutes he regarded it steadily, but found it impossible to view the picture as a whole, for his gaze swung inevitably to the girl and her great, smouldering, troubled eyes.

He looked steadily into her eyes, marveling at the swirling smoky lights that danced in their depths, their swiftly changing colors too delicately shaded to define.

For several minutes Vance studied the painting. In the semi-darkness of the room there was something unnatural about it, as if its colors glowed more deeply and flashed more brightly in the darkness.

To him now, the picture seemed to be the only object in the room. It dominated every other object by its magnificent reality. Vance frowned and shook his head. He wasn’t the type to lose himself in contemplation. He had seen the great artistic masterpieces of the world during his travels, but they had never impressed him as did this picture.

The tall slender girl in the painting was the most ethereally beautiful creature he had ever seen, but it was the haunting, troubled look in her great eyes that lent her the air of mystery and seductive glamor.

And the great beast at her side was an unparalleled work of art. Every stroke of the artist’s brush had caught the nobility, the grandeur, the fierceness of the mighty beast; and at the same time its humble devotion to the tall viking-blonde girl was evident in every line of the great, heavily-chewed body.

Vance was unaware of the passage of time. His valet entered the room to announce that he was going out for the night, and Vance waved him away with an abstracted hand.

Vaguely he heard a door slam, and he realized he was alone in the darkened apartment. But still he stood in the center of the dark living-room, gazing at the painting.

The city noises that drifted faintly to his ears, seemed to fade gradually away, to lose themselves in the blackness of the night.

Vance moved closer to the picture. His eyes met those of the girl in the painting and he stared steadily, intently and longingly into them.

Then he noticed something that sent a shiver down his spine, and felt the perspiration standing out on his brow.

For the expression in the girl’s eyes had suddenly seemed to change. Instead of the troubled, haunted gaze, there was, it seemed, a strange transformed light of anticipation, and of voiceless hope that lighted flames of dancing light in her glorious eyes.

Obeying a compulsion that was beyond definition Vance moved slowly toward the picture, his thoughts confused and whirling. He seemed caught in a force, a will stronger than his own. Had he been hypnotized, his actions could not have been more automatic, more rigidly directed.

But he was not alarmed; rather, he was enormously excited. The face of the girl was blazing radiantly now, as if reflecting the glow of an inner fire.

Vance stood as if poised on the brink of a steep cliff. Behind him was darkness and oblivion, but before him, in the face of the girl, in the voiceless hope that gleamed in her eyes, in the tremulous smile that seemed ready to break on her lips, he saw life and hope and beauty and danger.

He advanced another step toward the picture, and the light in the girl’s eyes grew warmer. The radiance of her face was like the sun at noon-day.

Entranced, mesmerized, Vance stumbled forward, covering the last few steps in a rush. There were swirling lights before his eyes, and his heart was hammering like a trip-hammer against his ribs. The girl’s face, her entire figure, was transfigured with the smile that seemed to break over her face like the sun rising on a gray dawn.

Vance felt himself falling forward. He seemed to be losing consciousness. A wall of blackness was closing on him from all sides, and there was nothing but the slender figure of the girl, as beautiful and dramatic as a slim bright flame, between his falling body and that darkness.

Then the picture came to life!

Even in his numbed state Vance recognized the sudden expression of terror that spread over the girl’s face, destroying her smiling beauty. She shrank back, but underlying her terror there was a fearlessness and a courage that was as bright as a gleaming sword.

Vance heard a snarling, deep chested roar, and with his last conscious glance, saw the great beast at the girl’s side crouching to spring. The muscles of the mighty animal bunched under its tawny hide and its eyes gleamed with rage.

But at a touch of the girl’s hand, the beast backed away and then the two incredible figures, the glorious girl and the golden lion, wheeled and disappeared.

At that moment Vance fell forward into the illimitable blackness of a depthless, timeless, ageless abyss.

Chapter II

A Strange World

Vance Cameron awoke slowly. For several moments he seemed suspended in a hazy, flickering limbo, but slowly and gradually the mists cleared from his eyes and he saw a vast distant red sky above his head, in which two mighty green suns burned brilliantly.

He realized that he was lying on his back. He shut his eyes against the searing green light of the dual suns and tried to collect his wildly scattered thoughts.

All he could remember, all he could bring into focus was that moment when the eyes of the girl in the painting had suddenly come alive, glowing with warm, encouraging light, and he had moved toward her like a sun-blighted traveler toward an oasis.

Then he recalled what had happened. She had cringed and a look of terror had spread over her beautiful features; the mighty beast at her side had snarled in rage.

Vance shook his head dazedly. He felt as if he were poised on the precipice of sanity, but that at any instant his mind might plunge into the black and unplumbed depths of sheer madness.

In his mind’s eye he could see the girl and beast, magnificent and noble, their courage and spirit standing forth in every line of the painting.

But was it all some mad dream?

With an effort he raised himself on one elbow and opened his eyes. The scene that met his eyes was one of rugged magnificence, of incomparably wild grandeur. A mighty forest of towering trees stretched away to his left, but they were like no trees that he had seen before in his life. Their boles were incredibly thick and their majestically spreading tops seemed to merge with the blazing red sky. They were purple and green in color but the shades ran together, mingling and merging in a bewildering, eye-dazzling pattern.

Shafts of green light from the great emerald suns slanted through their towering tops, criss-crossing in geometric squares and angles. Where the slanting shafts of light intersected they fused into blazing spots of color and these luminous balh of light winked against the darkness of the forest like Christmas tree ornaments.

Vance turned from this bewilderingly unreal scene and saw, to his right, a narrow, uneveruroadway winding up a ragged, mountainous slope and disappearing into a gulley-like cleft in the highest of the jagged ridges. The ground under him was composed of a black, glinting, shale-like substance and the distant mountains seemed to be of the same material.

His mind reeled dizzily as he studied the barren, bewildering terrain. There were no answers to the questions that hammered at his brain.

What was this place? How had he come here? And the gloriously beautiful golden girl? Had she been real, or was she only the product of his disordered imagination?

Frowning, he climbed to his feet. Carefully he explored his arms and legs. Except for a general feeling of impotent helplessness, he seemed to have received no damage from his transition to this mysterious place.

As he stood there, turning over in his mind the insoluble problems that his predicament presented, he heard a clattering noise in the distance.

The sharply reverberating sound shattered the stillness with startling abruptness. Vance wheeled and saw that two human figures had appeared from one of the narrow gashes in the mountainous slope.

They were mounted on huge, awkward, four-legged beasts, and it was the thundering of hoofs on the hard, rocky ground that had caused the strident clattering noise.

The two men rode toward Vance at an easy lope. They were attired in flame-colored garments with gaudy green sashes and trappings. Their broad shoulders were covered with metal plates that glinted dully in the light of the blazing green suns.

When they were within a dozen feet of Vance they reined their mounts to a stop. One of the men wore a full dark beard that covered the lower half of his powerfully cast face. His eyes, coal-black and coal-hard, glowered at Vance from under low, beetling brows.

The other man was smaller than his companion and his face was cleanshaven, revealing thin, finely molded features and a well-shaped, but weak jawline. His eyes were pale and large and they did not meet Vance’s squarely.

The thick-shouldered rider with the dark beard and hard, boring eyes spoke first, and his voice was a heavy guttural growl.

“Who are you?”

Vance stiffened, for the words had been spoken in English. And, for some reason, it seemed incongruous to hear that language spoken in these wild, barbaric surroundings.

The two men, he saw, were studying him carefully, almost anxiously. There was something so intent and watchful in their gaze that he instinctively set himself on guard. He saw the two riders exchange looks, then the smaller one, with the thin narrow face, turned to him.

“You do not need to be alarmed,” he said. His voice smooth and quiet. “We are friends. I am known here as Numari.” He waved a slim, negligent hand toward his companion. “This is Rakar, my Grand Agent.”

Vance listened carefully to the man’s words. They were precise and correct, but they were spoken with a peculiar accent, as if the speaker had little experience with the language.

Both of the men were regarding him intently, as if anxious to determine the effect of the speech on him.

Vance acknowledged the introduction with a nod. He realized that he would learn more by keeping his mouth shut and letting them do the talking.

The smaller man, Numari, glanced about the small clearing and then his eyes shifted to the vast dark depths of the forest. There was a worried, apprehensive frown on his face when his pale eyes returned nervously to his companion, the man he had designated as Rakar.

Rakar growled something unintelligible from the depths of his bull-neck and swung to face Vance.

“You haven’t said how you came here,” he said. There was no friendliness in his gruff, snarling voice.

“You haven’t asked me,” Vance said. His lean brown face hardened. He didn’t like the other’s tone and he wasn’t bothering to hide his feelings.

Numari raised a chiding hand and shot a swift, warning glance at Rakar before turning a pleasant face to Vance.

“Naturally,” he said, smoothly, “your presence here is somewhat intriguing. You must pardon our curiosity, but there are things we are anxious to know. It is true, is it not, that you come from the great dimension of movement; where machines of all type and description move over the land, fly through the air and burrow under the ground and sea?”

“Yes,” Vance said, puzzled, “that is true.” He wondered fleetingly how the other knew. And he wondered again where and what this place was.”

“Ah!” smiled Numari, “that is so very interesting. You see, we know certain things about your world and we are very interested in learning more. We have, as you doubtless have noticed, learned your language, but there are other important things we would be happy to know. First, we would be greatly obliged if you would tell us how you came here.”

He leaned forward as he spoke and his thin, edged features were touched with a faint smile. But the smile did not go as far as his eyes. They remained pale and emotionless, shifting slightly away from Vance’s direct stare.

“I’m not sure myself,” Vance answered. Without exactly knowing why, he was stalling for time, trying to find out what Numari was driving at in his oblique, subtle manner.

“What, then, of Laonara?” Rakar demanded. But he did not address this question to Vance. His hot gaze was on his slender companion, Numari, and there was a controlled and bitter anger in his harsh voice.

Numari glanced warningly at him. Vance caught the swift expression of displeasure that accompanied the look.

“Rakar,” Numari said to Vance, “speaks of Laonara, a young girl, who has been known to frequent this spot on occasions. Perhaps you have seen her?”

Vance kept his face expressionless. He could tell from the tense looks on the faces of the two mounted men that there was more than a casual significance behind Numari’s question. He felt as if he were finally seeing part of the design that lay behind Numari’s interrogation.

“A girl?” he repeated. He frowned and shook his head puzzledly.

“Yes?” Numari said. “You have seen her?” Excitement had crept into his soft voice.

Vance realized, now, that it was to his own advantage to say nothing of the girl. Although he couldn’t imagine how, that information might be a trump card later.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re the only persons I’ve seen here.” That much was strictly true. “What does this girl look like?”

“She is tall and fair,” Numari answered. “You would remember her if you saw her.”

“We are wasting time,” Rakar growled. He swung the head of his mount impatiently about. “We must be going.” He added something in a tongue unintelligible to Vance. The last sentence was spoken directly to Numari and seemed to be a sharp command.

Numari nodded slightly and turned to Vance.

“Since you have arrived so unexpectedly in our midst, we would be very happy to offer you such accommodations as we have at our disposal.”

Vance realized that he was helpless to do anything but accept their offer. As yet, he knew nothing of this place to which he had so mysteriously come. And of the golden girl of the picture, he was equally in doubt. If it hadn’t been for Numari’s questions about such a girl, he would have been ready to believe that the entire experience had been the result of his imagination.

“All right,” he said. He wondered, then, what he was heading for. And he wondered what their reaction would have been had he refused to accompany them.

“Excellent,” Numari said. He reined his shaggy, cumbersome beast closer to Vance and extended his hand. Vance clasped his wrist and swung himself up to the back of the animal. He was surprised by the steel-like strength in Numari’s arm.

When he was settled, Numari dug heels into the flanks of the great beast and it lumbered ahead, following Rakar’s mount.

The hoofs of the swaying animals struck a ringing, clattering sound from the rock-hard ground as they cantered toward the gulley from which the two riders had originally appeared.

They rode through the narrow gash in the ridge and entered a plateau of barren, rocky desolation. The black, depressing landscape spread endlessly away on both sides, an uninviting scene of grim, brooding lifelessness. Ahead, a half-mile or so, Vance judged, another sloping ridge rose into the air, outlined sharply against the boiling red of the sky. When their mounts had plodded across the barren plateau and reached this second ridge, Rakar clattered on ahead and disappeared through a passage in the slope. Numari reined to a stop.

“The delay will not be long,” he said.

They waited for several minutes before Rakar appeared again, followed by a half-dozen men similarly mounted. These men were more of Rakar’s type than Numari’s. Strong and solid, with heavy dark beards, they sat their steeds with careless ease as they galloped forward. They wore plain dark clothing with white sashes, and Rakar’s brilliant green and red raiment stood out dramatically against their drab background.

“A few of my good men,” Numari murmured. “We will proceed now.”

The new arrivals studied Vance with bold, impassive glances before wheeling their mounts and riding on ahead of the party. Rakar rode directly before Numari. They followed the ridge for a number of miles. It was impossible to estimate how long they had been riding for the great blazing green suns seemed to be fixed and unmoving. Vance studied them carefully from time to time, but their position was the same as when he had first seen them.

Finally they reached the end of the long sloping ridge which had flanked their course. The party turned and began a slow cautious descent of a descending slope that led downward to an immense spreading valley, in which Vance could see the shapes of vast, alabaster-white buildings stretching for miles in every direction.

Numari reined their mount to a stop at the top of the slope and swept his arm in a wide circle over the vast panoramic scene.

“Welcome to Bondira,” he said sardonically. An amused grin touched his lips. “Here, I rule.”

Vance studied the majestically sprawling city with interest. The structures were built at a uniform height, but there were no geometric considerations in the lay-out of streets and grouping of edifices. They were jumbled about like carelessly arranged blocks, without reference to size or position. In the light of the green suns the white buildings gleamed with a pale weird translucence that cast a gleaming corona about each structure.

“It is pretty, is it not?” Numari murmured. Rakar and the others of the party were half-way down the slope, Vance noticed. Numari swung their mount about.

“Let us go down,” he said.

Chapter III

Bondiral

When they reached the main section of the sprawling city, Numari dismounted and tossed the reins of his mount to a young boy who was standing outside one of the larger, gleaming white buildings.

Vance had seen few inhabitants in the streets of the strange city. On several occasions he had seen men moving slowly along the wide streets, but there was something beaten and furtive about their appearance that puzzled him.

Numari led him through the arched, open doors of the building into a wide, softly-lighted foyer. Here, Vance saw more men, swarthy, bearded giants, of the type that had accompanied them to the city. These men were standing at various stations apparently on guard duty. Two of them stepped forward and swung open a huge door as Numari and Vance strode across the floor of the foyer.

Numari nodded briefly to the men, and they bowed their heads and placed their right hands over their hearts as he passed.

The door closed silently behind them as they entered a large, luxuriously furnished hall, lighted by softly glowing tapers in each of the room’s four corners.

Couches lined the laminated walls, covered with soft, lustrous skins and over the gleaming, translucent floor were scattered thick-woven rugs of gray and white patterns.

The arched ceiling was covered with an intricate tracery of design that seemed to form changing shapes as the flickering luminations played over them.

In the center of the room, facing the massive doors through which they had entered, was an elevated dais, gleaming with gilded metal. The seat and back of the throne were covered with tinted furs. A number of lower chairs were grouped about this central dais.

Numari seated himself on the dais and carefully arranged his green and red robes over his knees. There was a cryptic smile hovering about his lips as he waved Vance to one of the chairs grouped about the dais.

“Please, be seated,” he smiled. “You must be tired after your trip.”

Vance sensed that the words were not merely polite; they expressed a deliberate command. There was, he noticed, a definite change in Numari’s attitude since they had reached the city. The anxiousness and worry had dropped from him and his smile was tinged with a sardonic irony as he studied Vance.

Vance remained standing.

“I’m more comfortable this way,” he said drily.

Numari settled back on his ornate dais. His fingers toyed with tassels on the arms of the chair.

“As you prefer,” he said. “There are several things I want to discuss with you, but I will wait until you are rested and refreshed. Primarily I am curious to know more of the workings of your vast mechanistic civilization. I find such things very fascinating. I’m sure you won’t mind acting as my tutor for a while.”

“I’m not so sure,” Vance said. He realized suddenly that he was in an extremely peculiar position. Whether it was a precarious position, he couldn’t tell. That would depend on Numari and his designs. But he did realize that he knew nothing about where he was or how he had come to this amazing land; and that without Numari’s approval there would be little chance of his ever leaving.

Numari leaned forward. His thin face was quite expressionless, but his cold eyes were narrowed suspiciously.

“Just what do you mean,” he said.

“I have to return to my own country as soon as possible,” Vance said quietly. “I am needed there. I can’t stay here.”

Numari studied him thoughtfully for a moment and then he smiled slowly. Leaning back in his throne he chuckled softly.

“I understand,” he said. “Naturally you are anxious to return to your own — er — land. And we are more than anxious to do what will please you. But there may be some slight delays in arranging your transportation.” His lips widened in a smile. “Yes, transportation might be something of a problem.”

“What do you mean?” Vance asked. “Why should there be any difficulty?”

“I will explain everything to you tomorrow,” Numari said, smiling easily. “Now you need food and rest. I am sure you will find things quite comfortable here while you are with us.” He raised a slender hand in the air. The gesture was obviously a signal, for a small door at the opposite end of the room opened and an elderly, white-haired man entered.

“Yes?” he said respectfully.

Without turning his eyes from Vance, Numari said, “Take this man to a room here in my palace. Bring him food and see that he is comfortable. Do you understand, Aki?”

“Yes,” the elderly man said quietly. “Aki,” Numari said to Vance, “is one of the few slaves in my kingdom who understands the language you speak. How he picked it up is a mystery, even to me. That is why I have arranged for him to act as your personal servant while you are with us. I am sure that he will be able to satisfy all of your needs.”

“You seem to be arranging a rather permanent set-up,” Vance said thoughtfully. “You really do expect me to spend quite a while here, don’t you?” Numari looked pained.

“It grieves me to think that the thought of staying a while with me is repugnant to you. I had hopes that you might grow to like it here and remain with us, of your own volition, for a pleasant stay. But,” he sighed, “that is obviously not to be. We will discuss everything on the morrow, however. In the meantime everything here is at your disposal. Enjoy yourself.”

It was an obvious dismissal.

Vance hesitated an instant and then he glanced at the servant, Aid, who was holding the door open for him. He shrugged and sauntered toward the open door. Numari did not turn his head, but Vance could see the amused smile on his face and the winking lights of mirth in his eyes.

Vance felt, as he walked through the open door and into a dimly lit corridor, that he was walking straight into trouble. But there was no other course for him to take. Everything he had encountered in this strange land had been bewilderingly confusing, and until he learned something of the place, it would be sheer folly to take a step on his own.

What was Numari’s purpose in keeping him here? There was no answer to that question. There were no answers to any of the tormenting questions that his very presence here raised.

In a lifetime of adventurous living Vance had looked many times into the dark face of the unknown, but always there had been something palpable to fight, to hit, to shoot, to put his hands on. Now there was nothing but bewildering mystery, further complicated by Numari’s sly innuendos and by the meaningful glances exchanged between the burly Rakar and Numari, when they had questioned him about the golden girl.

What had they called her?

Laonaral!

What was Numari’s interest in this girl? Was this Laonara, they mentioned, the same glorious, viking-proud golden girl of the picture?

Vance shook his head despairingly. He was beginning to doubt even the evidence of his own senses. His entire memory of the girl in the picture might have been no more than a mirage, an hallucination or some queer optical illusion.

The corridor door closed with a slight click. The sound brought him back to reality.

The servant, Aki, stepped in front of him and bowed deferentially.

“Will you follow me please?”

Vance noted the old man’s stumbling, halting speech; but he also noted the calm, clear blue eyes, and the proud, seamed features of the man. In spite of his years his carriage was erect and straight, belying the snow-white hair that crowned his noble head like a halo.

He nodded and the old man turned and moved slowly down the long corridor. Vance followed him past two intersecting corridors and up a long sloping walk that led to a higher level. The walls and floors were composed of a hard shiny substance, as smooth and lustrous as marble, but it was unveined and as white as alabaster.

The old man halted at last before a door that was so perfectly fitted into the wall as to be practically unnoticeable. He opened the door with a gentle shove and stood aside.

Vance stepped into a large, windowless room, comfortably furnished with two couches set against opposite walls and low backless chairs covered with soft tan furs.

There were no windows in the room. Illumination was provided by slim tapers that burned softly and slowly and without causing any noticeable smoke.

Vance realized that in spite of the architectural perfection of the city, and the generally cultured air of the inhabitants he had met, he had seen no evidences of mechanical or electrical developments.

When he looked around he saw that Aki, the aged servant, had followed him into the room, closing the door behind him.

The old man’s face was tense with excitement and his steady blue eyes were fixed intently on him, as if trying to measure and weigh him with the glance.

“Please,” the old man whispered, in his strange halting accent, “I must talk with you. There is no time to lose.”

Vance stared at him in surprise.

There was something demanding and urgent in the old man’s voice that compelled his interest.

“Okay,” he said.

Aki’s brown forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“Okay?” he repeated doubtfully. “I do not know—”

Vance smiled.

“That means all right, go ahead. I’m listening.”

Aki looked quickly behind him, at the closed door, then turned back to Vance.

“You must leave this place,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You must not stay here another minute. Already it may be too late.”

Vance studied the old man’s honest, seamed face, and a slow frown settled over his eyes as he saw the anxious fear that twisted those aged features.

“Perhaps you’d better tell me what you mean,” he said.

The old man shot another fearful glance at the door behind him.

“There is no time,” he said tensely. His trembling, veined hands clutched Vance’s arm. “You must believe me. I know why you were brought here. She has told me everything. I have helped her with all the plans. But something has gone wrong. Someone discovered what she was attempting. That is why you are here now, in the castle of Numari, instead of with her. Don’t you see? You must believe me.”

Vance shook his head, his face grim and serious. Nothing the old man said made any sense to him, but he had the feeling that he was coming closer to the heart of the mystery that surrounded his presence in this strange, incredible world.

“I’m sorry, Aki,” he said. “I don’t get what you’re driving at. Who is this ‘she’ you’re talking about?”

“She?” Aki repeated. His voice and face were incredulous. “But I thought you knew. Before the evil days of Numari and Rakar she was our queen, our goddess, our ruler. She was kind and wise and good and governed us in peace and happiness. And she will once again, I–I swear.” The old man drew himself up proudly as he spoke and there was a look of eagles in his steady, blue eyes.

“But who is she?” Vance persisted. “She is Laonara,” Aki said.

The name rang a bell in Vance’s memory. That was the name Numari had mentioned. The name of the girl Numari and Rakar had asked him about so carefully and searchingly.

Laonara then must have been the girl in the portrait, the magnificent, viking-blonde girl with the swirling, smoky eyes, whose image had metamorphosed to throbbing life before his eyes a day, a year, an aeon ago.

“You must come with me,” Aki insisted. “There is danger for you here. Numari and Rakar seek only your knowledge of war-like, destructive science. They want that power for their own design.”

“Where else can I go?” Vance asked. “I couldn’t leave here if I wanted to. And why was I brought to this place? That was Laonara’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Aki admitted. “But she, herself, must explain why. When you have seen Laonara everything will be clear and right and understandable to you.”

“Can you take me to her?”

“Yes,” Aki’s voice trembled with relief. His eyes were shining brightly and his gnarled, veined hands clasped together in a gesture of gratitude. “Yes,” he repeated jubilantly, “I can and will take you to my queen, Laon—”

A heavy knock suddenly sounded on the door of the room, splintering the quiet silence. Aki wheeled about, an expression of terror spreading over his seamed features. Before he could move again the door was shoved roughly inward and Rakar shouldered his way into the room. His dark, bearded face was impassively cynical, but his eyes were black and hot as they swung from Aki to Vance.

He was not alone. Several of the heavy-shouldered riders stood behind him in the corridor, their brutal faces gleaming with anticipation.

Rakar stared at Vance for a long moment and a humorless smile parted his full, heavy lips.

“This is interesting,” he said softly. “Is it?” Vance said. He fought to curb his rising anger. There was something in Rakar’s insolent state that raised the hackles on the back of his neck.

Rakar turned from him without answering. His thick powerful hand shot out and closed over Aki’s frail shoulder. The muscles of his forearm bunched, his fingers closed like steel claws and Aki sank to his knees, a sobbing moan breaking from his lips.

“Dog!” Rakar growled. He shook the old man roughly, savagely. Still holding the old man with his one hand he lifted him from the floor and flung him toward the men standing in the corridor. They caught Aki’s stumbling form and jerked him erect, twisting his arms behind his body. His white head sagged limply forward against his chest.

“Take him away,” Rakar snapped. He turned to Vance, his heavy, dark face reddened with his rage.

“You will be wise to forget what you heard from this mad slave,” he growled.

Vance glanced briefly at the elderly slave, Aki, held helpless in the grip of Rakar’s men and then his gaze swung back to Rakar.

“What are you going to do to him?” he asked, ignoring Rakar’s instruction.

Rakar’s strong white teeth flashed against the darkness of his beard.

“That does not concern you,” he said. “What difference does it make whether a slave lives or dies?”

“It does to me,” Vance snapped. He felt Aki’s eyes on him, silently imploring. “Numari, your ruler, gave this man to me to use as a personal servant. I think that entitles me to some say in the matter. Tell your men to take their hands off him. If he’s to be punished Numari will take care of it, not your gang of hoodlums.”

Vance watched the expression on Rakar’s face as he spoke. He was stalling for time, hoping to bluff Rakar into releasing the slave. There were questions he had to ask Aki, questions that might solve the whole riddle of his presence here in this strange, barbaric world. And he didn’t intend to let that chance slip from him. But it was impossible to judge the effect of his words on Rakar.

The man’s swarthy, lowering face was as enigmatic as the fissures in a granite wall.

“I have given you excellent advice,” he said harshly. “Keep out of this affair and forget what you have heard. This old fool will have his head split within the hour and that will be the end of the matter.”

Vance stepped forward slowly, and instinctively his hands tightened into hard fists. He didn’t know what he could do to help Aki, but he was through stalling.

Rakar put a big hand against his chest.

“I have warned you,” he said tensely.

Vance moved forward against the pressure of Rakar’s hand and his gray eyes were dancing with reckless lights. There was a tingling excitement in his veins. He knew, now, what was going to happen.

“Take your hand down,” he said quietly.

Rakar’s dark face flushed with hot anger. His thick brutal lips flattened against his teeth.

“Fool!” he hissed.

The muscles of his arm and shoulder flexed as he lunged suddenly forward, shoving his entire strength and weight against Vance’s chest.

Vance had been expecting the move. He twisted sharply sideways and Rakar’s hand slipped from his chest.

The momentum of Rakar’s lunge sent him sprawling to the floor. With a roar of bestial rage he clambered to his feet and rushed at Vance, his great fists swinging like flailing mallets.

Vance dropped into a crouch, a savage exultation coursing through his body. He slipped under Rakar’s wildly swinging arms and drove a sledgehammer blow into his stomach.

Rakar staggered back, his face whitening with pain. His mouth opened and closed spasmodically as he fought for breath. Vance stepped in and swung again, coldly, savagely. His fist connected solidly with the bigger man’s jaw.

Rakar fell backward through the door of the room, sprawling in a tangled heap at the feet of the three guards who were holding the slave, Aki.

He rolled to a kneeling position, his hands clasped over his bleeding lips. There was a maniacal gleam of hatred in his narrowed, gleaming eyes.

Two of his gray-clad men had drawn short, wicked-looking knives and were starting for Vance, but he checked them with a sharp gesture of his hand.

“Wait!” he growled through swollen lips. His hate-maddened eyes swung to Vance. A cruel, humorless smile touched his lips.

“We shall see Numari now,” he said softly. “We have played too long with you.” He motioned to his men, who were crouched tensely, with daggers drawn. “Take him to the council chamber.”

Vance realized that it would be useless to resist. He relaxed as the two of Rakar’s men pinioned his arms and dragged him from the room and down the corridor. Rakar followed, with Aki and his guard bringing up the rear.

Chapter IV

Numari was reclining indolently on his raised dais, and there were a number of the gray-clad, grim-looking guards posted at the entrances of the council chamber, when Vance was dragged into the softly-lighted, luxuriously furnished room.

Numari’s thin, cynical face expressed an amused surprise as he stared blandly from Vance to Rakar.

“Has there been some difficulty?” he inquired softly. He made a slight gesture to the men holding Vance, and they released him and stepped back a few paces.

“Yes,” Rakar snapped harshly. He motioned to the guard holding Aki to shove him forward. “This traitor has been caught red-handed, spreading lies about you and talking of Laonara, which alone is punishable by death.” Numari glanced fleetingly at Aki and shook his head sadly.

“How very thoughtless of you,” he murmured. He turned again to Rakar. “And to whom was he telling these — ah — lies?”

Rakar nodded toward Vance.

“The one from the other world. And his actions indicate that he believes the slave before us. We have made a mistake in treating him gently. There are other methods he might understand more readily.”

“Possibly,” Numari said. He shifted slowly on his chair until he faced Vance directly.

“Do you have anything to say in answer to these charges?” he asked quietly.

Vance smiled mockingly.

“Would it do me any good?” He folded his arms and met Numari’s gaze deliberately. “I don’t know what your game is but I don’t like what I’ve seen so far.”

“That is a pity,” Numari said, smiling. “Since you are going to spend considerable time with us, your attitude is unfortunate. We need your knowledge and information of the mechanical and electrical developments of your dimension. We were prepared to make your stay as pleasant as possible if you were willing to cooperate. “Now,” he shrugged eloquently, “you are forcing us to be unpleasant. It is, however, not too late to change your mind and your attitude. The scientific knowledge you possess is vital to us and one way or another, we will acquire it. The means we employ will be determined by your attitude.”

Vance’s jaw set stubbornly.

“I don’t feel in a very cooperative mood,” he said sarcastically.

Numari sighed. “That is unfortunate — for you. You leave me no alternative. Beneath this building are a number of dungeons which are not particularly pleasant. We find them useful in changing stubborn minds. When I see you again I feel quite sure that you will be more responsive.”

He nodded to Rakar.

“You may take charge of the prisoners. Perhaps your methods would have been best from the beginning.”

Dakar smiled slowly, a twisted smile of gloating anticipation, as he regarded Vance. A deep, unpleasant laugh rumbled in his bull throat and his hand moved thoughtfully to his battered jaw.

“It is not too late,” he said softly. “I’m sure of that. It is never too late to even scores.”

He made a sharp gesture with his hand. The men behind Vance stepped forward and grabbed his arms. One of them prodded the point of a dagger into his back. For an instant Vance tensed, ready to lash out at the men holding him, but he realized that any struggle would be worse that futile. His muscles relaxed and he permitted the men to shove him toward the door. Numari said, “I will see you again.” Vance halted and twisted to face the dais. There were hard bitter lights in his gray eyes.

“Yes,” he said softly, “you’ll see me again.”

Numari’s light laugh was in his ears as he was shoved through the door and it was slammed behind him with thudding finality.

Vance was led along a corridor to an intersecting passageway that sloped downward at a noticeable angle. For several minutes they followed this circular, descending corridor, and with each step the increasing humidity became more stifling. Rivulets of water trickled down the smooth sides of the corridor and collected in puddles on the hard, smooth floor. An occasional flickering taper cast a dubious illumination over the glistening walls.

Vance could hear Rakar behind him and he could also hear the lighter steps of Aki and the man who guarded him, but other than these sounds the tunnels were as silent as a tomb.

It was impossible to gauge distance or time in the subterranean passages. For what seemed to be hours they followed the tortuously winding passage until finally it straightened and levelled out. Now the tapers were hundreds of feet apart, and except for these intervals, they plodded on through the dank tunnels in a stygian blackness.

When they passed the next light Vance noticed a door on one side of the passage. It was apparently cut into the stone in the most primitive fashion. One small window, hardly three inches square, had been chiseled at its top and this was the only aperture in the solid face of the door.

Vance shuddered as they trudged past this crypt-like entrance. His imagination balked at the image of what might lie behind that door, in the gloomy vault it sealed.

He realized then that such a cell was probably his own destination. Drops of perspiration started on his forehead. Imprisonment in one of the tomb-like vaults that lined these dark corridors would be a hell on earth, a living death.

Finally, after their seemingly interminable march, the two men at his side jerked him to a halt. Rakar strode up alongside him.

“This is the end of the tunnel system,” he said. He pointed ahead where Vance could see, through the gloom, a solid wall blocking off the corridor. “For men left here,” Rakar continued, “this is generally the end of the world. When you again see the light you will be older — and wiser.”

One of Vance’s guard had pulled open a creaking, vault-like door, exposing a small, damp cell, barely large enough for a person to stand in. There was a rustle of small things on the floor as the light from the corridor fell into the room.

“You will not be completely alone,” Rakar said ironically.

The two guards, at a sign from Rakar, suddenly jerked Vance’s arms behind his back and twisted them so that he was pinioned helplessly between them.

“Before I leave you here to rot,” Rakar said savagely, “I’m going to pay you back in full for this.”

He touched his battered jaw, the result of Vance’s swinging fist, and smiled bitterly.

“This will be something for you to remember in the darkness,” he said.

With sadistic deliberation he drew back his fist and drove it at Vance’s face with all of his strength.

But the blow did not find its mark. At the instant the swing started, Vance hurled himself to one side, jerking the guards off their feet with the unexpectedness of his lunge.

Rakar bellowed in rage. But before he could move toward Vance a rumbling reverberation suddenly blasted through the dimly-lighted passageway, jarring the solid rock beneath their feet. There was a crushing noise, as of two mighty boulders grinding together, and then the wall that blocked off the tunnel swung ponderously, slowly open.

A terrible, deep-throated roar blasted against the walls of the tunnel, as the intersecting wall swung clear.

Vance hurled one guard from him and was struggling to his feet, when the dreadful, marrow-chilling sound exploded in his ears, deafening him with its immensity.

He wheeled toward the sound and the incredible sight that met his eyes branded itself on his memory for all time.

A golden, lion-like beast was crouched at the end of the tunnel, its mighty jaws distended horribly, as roar after roar blasted from its great chest, jarring the walls and ceiling with their impact.

And behind this immense beast stood the flowing haired, thrillingly beautiful girl who had first appeared to him as a painted figure in a picture.

Now, her face was aflame with triumphant exultation and smoky lights swirled in the depths of her enormous eyes.

Vance saw her lips move, saw her hand touch the mighty beast, crouched at her feet like a dog. And then what happened was too quick for his eye to follow.

A roar split the air. The great golden beast was a blurred, tawny streak as its powerful legs charged past Vance. Vance wheeled in time to see Rakar go down before the onslaught, a hideous gurgling scream tearing from his throat.

One of the brutal guards who had been holding Vance crawled to his feet and lurched toward the imperious figure of the golden girl, a dagger clutched in his fist.

Vance caught him by the shoulder, jerked him about and slammed a chopping axe-like blow into his face, sprawling him to the ground.

A scream sounded behind him and he spun about just in time to see Aki, the white-haired slave, fall backward against the wall, hands clasping his reddening breast. The guard who had struck the blow still held the dripping knife in his hand as he turned to face Vance’s charge.

Vance feinted with his shoulder, drew the man’s arms up and then drove in low, his powerfully driving legs propelling his body like a catapult. His hard, muscle-bunched shoulder caught the guard at the knees, cutting him down with scythe-like cleanness.

The guard fell on top of him, but a quick, powerful roll brought Vance up to his knees. The guard slashed at him with the knife, his face contorted with mad fury. Vance ducked and slipped an arm about the guard’s body. With a heave he rose to his feet and slammed the body of the guard against the granite-hard wall of the tunnel.

When the man fell to the floor he lay still, his neck twisted at an odd broken angle.

Vance felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and met the girl’s haunting, smoky gray eyes, on a level with his own. At her side the mighty golden beast crouched quietly, tail lashing nervously. There was something on the floor which had once been a man known as Rakar. Vance shuddered slightly as he looked at the horribly rent, mutilated body, but he knew that the man had deserved the death he’d received.

“We cannot stay here,” the girl said. Her voice was smooth and soft and yet there was an undercurrent of regal authority in the liquid tones. “You will come with me, please?”

Vance nodded slowly. He knew, without knowing why, that this girl was good. The quality was in her eyes and her bearing and her voice.

She took his hand and led him toward the end of the tunnel. When they passed the intersecting wall she pressed a stone set in the wall and the massive gate swung shut behind them, blocking off the tunnel. They were enveloped in an impenetrable blackness.

At his heels he heard the panting of the great beast and the soft pad of its paws on the hard ground. But the girl’s hand in his was cool and firm and she led him swiftly and surely through the blackness.

Chapter V

Laonara!

Vance followed the girl for several minutes through the darkness of the twisting corridor. Finally a shaft of bright light fell at his feet as they made a right-angle turn, and in a few steps they were out of the tunnel, under the great arched vault of the red sky with its dual gleaming suns.

They were in a small clearing, formed naturally by erosion in the face of the sheer cliff which towered above them. There was only one other entrance from the tiny valley, and that was a winding trail that led up and over the ledge to the right.

The girl led him to the middle of the clearing and Vance noticed there was a worried, troubled look in her wide eyes.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. She made a slight gesture with her hand and the great Jbeast sank slowly to the ground, his solemn brown eyes fixed following her slightest motion. “I left some of my men here to wait for me,” she said anxiously. “If they thought I had been captured in the city they might have done something reckless.”

She stared about the clearing and her light, delicately arched eyebrows drew together in a faint frown.

Vance found himself staring at her almost incredible perfection of form and feature. She was clad simply in a single, closely fitting garment and her copper-tinted limbs were bare. Sandals laced over her narrow feet and she wore a wide belt about her waist, from which hung a slender, metallic rod with a faintly glowing tip.

She turned suddenly to him and put a hand on his arm. There was worry and tenseness in her mouth and eyes.

“There is much I must tell you,” she said, “and there is little time. It was I, Laonara, who brought you here. For many years, since I was a little girl, I ruled here in the city of Bondira, which is the largest city of our kingdom. Then Numari, the usurper, stole the throne and drove me into the forest, where I lived like a hunted thing with those of my subjects who were loyal and who were able to escape and come to me. I did not mind anything but the treatment Numari and his Grand Agent, Rakar, meted out to their subjects. That was the only reason I fought back; I couldn’t stand the thought of my people, who had always known peace and freedom, living and dying like slaves under the heel of Numari and his favored clique.”

Vance started to speak but Laonara held up one hand.

“Please let me finish. I think I know the questions you would ask. Your world is twice removed from ours, for it is in the third dimension. We are now in the fifth dimension. Long ago our scientists learned the secret of dimensional investigation and for years your civilization has been studied by the learned men of our kingdom. Our only thought was to attempt to improve our own development through the study of your science and culture. There was no method to pass from one dimension to another, but eventually even this secret was discovered. Our council decided that no one should make the attempt to bridge physically, the dimensional worlds, for we realized that our cultures and blood types would never successfully merge.

“Nevertheless, inter-dimensional travel was possible and Numari realized that, with the science of the third dimensions at his call, he could dominate and subjugate, not only this kingdom, but others as well, possibly even the kingdoms of your dimension. I can’t even imagine the scope of his madness. Numari did transport weapons and implements from your dimension, but he was unable to operate or duplicate them. This disobedience of his was the immediate cause of our falling out, which eventually resulted in his usurpation of the throne. But before I fled from the city I destroyed all of the laboratory apparatus and took with me the only remaining device for bridging the dimensional worlds.”

Vance’s eyes dropped to the slim rod hanging at her belt. Laonara touched it with her fingers.

“This is it. With it, I brought you here. I had no right to. I was violating our oldest law, but I was desperate. I had to have someone to help me, and this was the only way I knew to get help. Then, after I had succeeded in bringing you here, I almost lost you forever. I was waiting for you by the purple forest, but Numari and Rakar surprised me on one of their scouting trips. That is why, when you arrived, you met them instead of me. I was forced to flee with Shar for my life.”

“Shar?” Vance asked.

Laonara pointed to the great beast at her side.

“This is Shar.” She dropped her hand affectionately on one of the short thick horns which curled upward from his majestic head. “He is quite devoted to me. He has saved my life on a number of occasions. You are perfectly safe with him as long as I am here.”

The great beast rose to its feet as his mistress was speaking and began to pad about the clearing with a loping, restless gait. His head was raised slightly in a listening attitude. Something seemed to be bothering him, for a nervous whine was rumbling deep in his cavernous chest.

Laonara looked at him anxiously.

“Shar,” she whispered. “What is it?”

She looked up the sheer face of the cliff and her eyes were worried. She listened for a long moment, and then Vance saw the expression on her face suddenly change to one of alarm.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked tensely.

Vance listened and then shook his head.

“Not a thing,” he said.

Shar, the great lion-like animal, was circling the clearing at a fast lope. The mighty thews under his silken hide flashed and rippled with each stride. When he finally halted, he reared on his hind legs and scratched furiously against the face of the cliff. A tremendous, baffled roar rumbled in his throat.

Laonara gripped Vance’s arm tensely.

“Shar hears,” she cried. “My men have attacked the soldiers of Numari. They thought I had been trapped and they’re throwing their lives away in a direct onslaught against the city.”

“How many men do you have?” Vance asked quickly.

“Not more than two hundred.”

“And Numari?”

“He has several thousand mercenaries, but the people of the town will not be with him. If something happened to change the tide of the battle, they would turn on him immediately.”

“Your men are very brave,” Vance said simply. “They’re fighting against long odds.”

“And I stand here talking!” Laonara cried impatiently. “Shar! Here!”

As the mighty beast wheeled and trotted toward her, the girl turned to Vance and clasped his hand impulsively.

“The city is on the other side of the cliff, a long ride. I may not get there in time to fight with my men, but at least I can die with them. That is all that is left.”

She stripped the slim, metallic rod from her waist and closed his hand over it.

“This will take you back to your own world. Go quickly!”

She swung lightly to the back of Shar. “Goodbye!”

Her soft voice broke on the word.

The great animal lifted its head and charged across the clearing. His driving momentum carried him up the sloping path that led from the valley.

At the top of the ridge Laonara turned and waved to Vance. Her glorious hair was thrown back from her forehead and every line of her magnificent body was silhouetted against the blazing red sky as she lifted one hand in a farewell. Then, as Shar plunged forward, she was gone from sight in an instant.

Vance shouted to her, but the cliffs threw back his voice, futilely, mockingly. For an instant Vance stared helplessly at the ridge over which the girl and her mount had disappeared. Then his jaw hardened with determination. He didn’t intend to be counted out of this fight quite so easily. Ever since he had reached this incredible land he had been knocked from pillar to post without a chance to slug back. And Vane® Cameron was accustomed to slugging back.

A plan was already forming in his mind. It was wild and dangerous but there was nothing else for him to do.

Time was the imponderable element. If third dimension time and fifth dimension time were relative...

Feverishly, he studied the slender rod which Laonara had left with him. One end glowed whitely with a pale steady luminence. The other end was equipped with a sliding button that gave under the experimental pressure of his thumb.

For only an instant did he hesitate. Then he held the rod away from him and pressed the button down sharply.

A faint sputtering sounded at the glowing end of the tube and the white iridescence changed slowly but steadily to a bright flaming crimson. The glowing red light grew until it seemed that its flashing emanations flooded the entire valley. There was no sensation of heat, only the almost intolerable brilliance of the flaming light, growing brighter by the second.

Vance forced himself to stare directly at the core of the brilliant ball of light. Only for an instant did the light sear his eyes, then the sensation faded to a peculiarly restful feeling as if he were being mesmerized into a semi-comatose condition by the circle of light at the tip of the slender rod.

Gradually he felt the outlines of the clearing fade away and he seemed to be standing on the edge of a vast unfathomable nothingness. The color of the light was fading from crimson to black and the blackness at the core of the light stretched away like a corridor to infinity.

There was a powerful, undefinable attraction in that black passage-way and he stepped forward blindly, dazedly.

Then he was falling forward and the blackness enveloped him in a befogging, impenetrable cloud.

Consciousness left him.

Chapter VI

Vance opened his eyes in the familiar surroundings of his apartment. For an instant he stared stupidly, uncomprehendingly about, but as memory returned to him he stood up, his heart beating wildly.

He glanced at his watch but then he realized that relative time values of the two dimensions might be poles apart.

Crossing to the telephone, he dialed the municipal airport and talked to the superintendent, a man who knew of his R.A.F. record.

When he completed the call, he dropped the receiver back to its cradle and strode toward the door. He was still carrying the slender, glowing rod Laonara had given him and he slipped it into his pocket as he left the apartment...

At ten thousand feet Vance levelled out the trim, deadly Thunderbolt fighter he was flying. The ship was responsive to his lightest touch. He set the controls at dead center and locked them there. He made a rapid inspection of the instruments and the two forward cockpit guns, then removed the thin, metallic rod from his pocket.

He held it before him for an instant, hesitating. This was the biggest gamble he had ever made, and if luck wasn’t with him it would be his last.

Then he thought of courageous men fighting against oppression, led by a gallant, glorious girl, who was willing and glad to sacrifice her life with those of her loyal followers.

And he hesitated no longer.

His finger jammed down the button on the end of the rod and he watched anxiously as the familiar crimson light appeared, expanding by the second, flooding the cockpit and the sky with its red brilliance.

When the blackness began to appear at the core of the blazing crimson light he knew a moment of fear, but he held the rod directly in front of him and his eyes met the light in a steady, fixed stare.

Once again he felt himself losing touch with reality. The throbbing roar of the plane faded away to a muted hum. He saw nothing but the illimitable blackness of infinity stretching ahead of him and that blackness pulled him forward powerfully...

The drumming roar of the motor in his ears, the slip-stream of air past his face, these things awoke him from his coma-like sleep.

He raised his sagging head from his breast and rubbed a hand over his tired, aching eyes.

Then he looked up and saw two great green suns burning against a fiery red sky.

Consciousness returned with a snap.

A fierce exultation coursed through his veins like a powerful elixir as he realized that he had made it, that the dimensional bridge formed by the glowing rod had brought the plane safely across.

He was still flying at ten thousand feet. Unlocking the controls he swung the plane down in a sharp dive. For several minutes his gaze roved over the broad, barren terrain, then, in the distance and to his right, he saw the gleaming white buildings of the sprawling city of Bondira.

His pulses quickened as he levelled out and gunned the ship toward those alabaster landmarks.

What if he were too late? Maybe the fight had been over for years, or maybe it would occur in some future time.

He gritted his teeth savagely. No! He must be in time.

When he flashed over the city and peered down he saw a sight that raised his hopes.

There were men fighting in the streets and he spotted the majority of them as the gray-clad mercenaries of Numari.

He banked the plane and dropped down. The focal point of the battle seemed to be in front of Numari’s council building. On the steps and approaches of the building was a handful of men, fighting desperately against the steadily advancing grayclad ranks.

As he flashed over their heads he had a fleeting, thrilling image of Laonara, astride the mighty beast, Shar, fighting magnificently in the fore of the ragged, hopelessly outnumbered group on the steps of the building.

Vance swung around and dove toward the thickly massed troops of Numari, a grim smile twisting his lips.

His hands pressed the firing button. A chattering chant of death broke from the muzzles of the guns. He flicked the tail of the ship, spreading the devastating blast of his guns in hundred-foot swaths, cutting through Numari’s troops like an invisible scythe.

He swung the plane about in a tight bank and roared back over the heads of the gray-clad mercenaries. Holding his fire, he watched them scatter, as they broke their formations and fled madly. And he saw Laonara’s troops closing their ranks and starting after the disorganized mercenaries.

For Several minutes he followed the fleeing, routed troops of Numari, cutting them down like an avenging nemesis, until he saw them flinging away their weapons and dropping to the ground in surrender.

Banking again, he circled over the gleaming white council building of Numari, which now, he knew, would again be Laonara’s.

He settled down to a few hundred feet and circled until he saw the soldiers of Laonara returning.

Laonara, herself, was leading the small band, head flung back, hair streaming in the wind.

Vance felt a sharp, strange pang as he looked on her splendid, glorious beauty, for he knew that he was seeing her for probably the last time.

She had stopped now and, with Shar at her side, was looking up at his plane.

Vance lifted his hand in salute to her and to her courageous followers, for he knew he was not going to land. There was room for a landing, but he was afraid that he might never take-off again if he stood once more at Laonara’s side.

And he had to keep on flying. His job wasn’t done yet. Laonara’s fight for freedom had been won, but he still had a battle on his hands.

She answered his wave. There was a pleading uncertainty in the gesture, but Vance knew she’d understand, eventually, why he was leaving.

With a roaring climb he hurled the Thunderbolt up into the red heavens and his finger pressed the button on the slim, metallic rod.

He smiled faintly as the glowing crimson flame suffused the cock-pit, for he realized that he would always have the means of returning to this land and to its glorious queen.

But not until his own fight had been won. His smile turned to a grin as the blackness swept toward him. He had a hunch that it wasn’t going to be such a long wait.

Plot of Gold

First published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

When I arrived in Chicago one of the first things I did was to call Leander Leeds. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since we’d graduated from college five years before, but I’d never forgotten his skinny, serious, bespectacled features or his burning desire to become the Einstein of the chemical world.

He’d always been a rather interesting character to me and I had meant to keep in touch with him, but things just hadn’t worked out that way. Now, with a few days off from the hectic confusion of the Washington press bureau for which I labored, I determined to look him up.

He took his time answering the phone. I was ready to hang up when Central’s buzzing was interrupted.

“Hello,” a scared, squeaky voice said.

“Hello, yourself,” I said. I recognized Leander’s voice, but I was puzzled by its overtone of strained terror.

“You must have the wrong number,” he said. His voice was little more than a frightened squeak.

“This is Leander Leeds’ residence, isn’t it?” I demanded.

“N — no. I mean y — es.”

“Make up your mind,” I snapped into the phone. I was getting a little irritated with this cat and mouse business. “I want to talk to Leander Leeds.”

“About what?” the voice on the opposite end of the line said with a sort of frantic desperation.

“Hell!” I exploded. “Do I have to fill out a questionnaire to talk to him? I—”

I stopped. There had been a definite click on the other end. The phone was dead. I banged it into its cradle and swore eloquently. I said a great number of sulfurous and uncomplimentary things about Leander Leeds and his immediate ancestors before I calmed down enough to think rationally.

I lit a cigarette and frowned at the phone. Something was damned peculiar here. I was certain that I had been talking to Leander Leeds, but I couldn’t figure out any excuse for his actions, which were, to put it mildly, strange as the very devil.

What had he been afraid of?

There was no answer to that question. I stood up and paced the floor and the more I worried the problem the more curious I became.

Finally I came to a stop in the middle of the room. I pointed a firm finger at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

“You,” I said very distinctly, “are on a vacation. It is, I might remind you, your first in five years. Enjoy yourself, see some good plays, investigate the better bars and let your hair down generally. Okay, there’s something screwy about this Leander Leeds setup. What’s that to you? Poking your nose into someone else’s private grief leads to trouble all the way ’round. Forget it! To hell with Leander Leeds!”

That didn’t help. I was nibbling my nails ten seconds later. Finally I realized what I had to do, I scribbled down Leander’s address on a piece of paper and walked out of my room. I had to see Leander Leeds.

When I paid off the cab driver in front of the address I had copied from the phone book, I was pleasantly surprised by the luxurious neighborhood. Leander’s address was an immense apartment hotel, very exclusive and very swanky.

My bewilderment increased slightly. How could anyone living in such lush surroundings have anything serious to worry about?

I walked across the expansive, marble lobby to the desk. The clerk, a nattily dressed young man with a frigidly impersonal stare, nodded slightly to me.

“I wish to see Mr. Leeds,” I said.

“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”

“Matt Harlow. He’s not expecting me but I think it’s all right.”

The clerk sat down before a switch board and plugged in a line. As he waited he glanced sideways at me and I noticed a certain suspicious curiosity in his gaze.

I began to feel slightly furtive, for no good reason at all. I resisted an impulse to turn up my coat collar and pull down the brim of my hat.

After several minutes the clerk disconnected the line and shook his head.

“Mr. Leeds does not answer, sir,” he said.

“Doesn’t answer? You mean he’s not in?”

“He’s in all right,” the clerk said, “but he just doesn’t answer his phone.”

I pondered this for a moment and it didn’t make sense. But then nothing connected with Leander Leeds seemed to make any particular sense. However my curiosity was additionally sharpened.

“How do you know he’s in?” I asked the clerk. “Couldn’t he have stepped out for a moment?”

“He could have,” the clerk said, smiling tolerantly, “but he didn’t. As a matter of fact Mr. Leeds never leaves his apartment.”

“Never?”

“Never. For the past three weeks Mr. Leeds has not left his apartment.”

“Why?” I asked, somewhat groggily. This thing was enough to drive a person batty.

The clerk’s manner stiffened.

“It is our policy,” he said, “to respect the privacy of our tenants. If Mr. Leeds chooses to remain in his apartment he undoubtedly has sufficient reasons for doing so. It is, after all, his affair.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, a trifle fed-up with his supercilious attitude; “what’s his apartment number? I’ll go up and see him.”

The clerk looked doubtful, but finally he gave me the number of Leander’s apartment and I headed for the elevators.

Leander’s apartment was on the fifteenth floor. I got off the elevator and found his door without difficulty, banged the brass knocker twice, and waited.

There was no sound from within the apartment. I lit a cigarette and paced up and down before the door, my heels sinking a full inch into the heavy carpet.

I stopped and banged the knocker again. Then I rapped sharply with my knuckles on the creamy enamel of the door.

A full minute passed and then I heard a furtive footstep on the other side of the door. An instant after that, a squeaky voice said, “Who is it?”

This time I definitely recognized the voice as Leander’s.

“It’s Matt Harlow,” I said in a good loud voice. “Open up. What the devil’s wrong with you?”

Cautiously and slowly the door was opened about five inches at which point a heavy burglar chain stopped it. Then, in this aperture appeared a thin, pale, be-spectacled face, topped with scant, straw-colored hair. Leander Leeds!

“Is it really you, Matt? he gasped. His voice was high and squeaky and scared. It had always been high and squeaky but the tone of fright was something new.

“Certainly it’s me,” I said. “Can’t you see that for yourself?”

His wide, pale eyes behind their enormous cheaters shifted over my shoulder and then up and down the hall.

“Are you alone?” he whispered.

“Of course,” I said. “Did you expect me to bring along an army?”

He didn’t appear to hear me. His eyes were still flicking furtively about the corridor, as if he expected Boris Karloff to make an appearance any second.

Finally he looked at me and there were tears of relief in his eyes.

“Gosh, I’m glad to see you,” he said in a broken, husky voice.

I looked down at the burglar chain. “It doesn’t look that way,” I said. “What’s the matter with you? I haven’t got leprosy and I’m not here to steal the family’s gold.”

His face turned a shade whiter, if that were possible, and his trembling hand fluttered to his brow.

“Please,” he gasped in a stricken voice, “don’t mention that word to me. I’m liable to go mad. Maybe I am mad already. I don’t know.”

He was in a bad way.

“Take it easy,” I said. “Things can’t be that bad. If you’re in trouble maybe I can help you out a little.”

“Trouble?” he moaned. “That’s hardly the word for it. Somebody will have to invent a new word to describe the kind of a mess I’m in.”

His fingers began fumbling with the burglar chain. He seemed strangely excited.

“Maybe you can help me,” he said tensely. “You were always good at getting people out of jams back in school. Maybe... If I don’t at least talk to someone I’ll go insane.”

He opened the door and when I stepped into the front room of his apartment he slammed it and I heard him adjusting the chain and throwing the night emergency locks.

I glanced around the large living room and my eyebrows raised slightly. There wasn’t anything wrong with the room; in fact it was magnificently furnished and quite swanky, but...

It was practically filled with packing cases, huge, cumbersome crates with solidly nailed-down ‘tops.

“Well, well,” I said. “Moving day?”

Leander looked gloomily at the boxes and, as he stood beside me, I got my first good look at him. He had always been skinny but now he was thin to the point of emaciation.

He was wearing a loose dark dressing gown over a dirty shirt and baggy, unpressed trousers. He looked as if he’d been sleeping in the outfit for a week. His hands were twined together nervously and the harried desperate look was creeping back into his eyes.

I pointed to the crates.

“What goes?” I asked.

“Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something. I can’t tell you about it. You have to see it for yourself to believe it”

He led me through the dining-room and I noticed in passing that it too was filled with large, sealed packing cases.

We walked down a dark corridor and finally came to a stop before a closed door.

Leander fished a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

“This is my laboratory,” he said.

I followed him through the door and he switched a light on, flooding the large room with bright illumination.

This room, too, was filled with packing crates but they were open and I saw that they were about half-filled with dull bronze metal bars about three inches thick and twelve inches long.

In the center of the room was an intricate machine mounted on a low table. As I was examining it I heard a metallic clink and I saw that a bar of the dull metal had dropped into a receptacle in the front of the macchine.

Leander walked to the machine, picked up the metal bar and, with a sad sigh, tossed it into one of the open packing crates.

I studied the machine carefully. It was about two feet square and constructed of brilliantly gleaming metal. The lower half was simply a stout square box with a slot-like receptacle on the side facing me. The upper half of the machine was like nothing I had ever seen before. Filament-like wires twined together and disappeared into the interior of the machine in a sort of orderly disorder.

I heard another metallic clank. Glancing down at the machine’s receptacle I saw that another dull bronze bar had dropped into place.

Leander picked this bar up, too, and tossed it into one of the packing crates. He seemed more dejected and listless than ever.

“See that?” he asked moodily.

“Yes. What’s the idea?”

He looked at me for an instant and then he sighed heavily. His large weak eyes were damp.

“It’s no use,” he said. His voice was anguished and despairing. “You’ll never believe me. You’ll think I’m mad.”

I put a hand on his skinny shoulder. “I came here with the idea of helping you,” I said. “At least give me a chance.”

My words seemed to lend him a little courage. He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath.

“All right,” he said. “I—”

A metallic clank interrupted him. He stooped and removed the bronze-colored bar, but he didn’t toss it into a packing crate. He held it in his hands.

“Matt,” he said slowly, “do you know what this machine is doing?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said. “I’m no engineer. Why?”

Leander’s fingers tightened nervously about the metal bar. A beady nervous perspiration popped out on his pale forehead.

“Matt,” he gulped, “this machine is making gold!”

I didn’t get it right away.

“That’s nice,” I said, “but—”

“Didn’t you hear me? Leander cried, grabbing my arm. “It’s making gold! Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Nothing but gold, gold, gold.”

I stared at him and gradually the meaning of his words filtered into my brain.

“Gold?” I said. I looked rather stupidly from the machine to Leander. “Gold, eh?”

“Yes, yes,” he cried. He shoved the bar he was holding into my hands. “See for yourself. Solid gold.”

I took the bar and examined it. It was heavy. It looked like gold. Who knows? It might be gold. I snapped myself to with a jerk.

I shoved the bar back to Leander. “You’re nuttier than a fruit cake,” I told him. “What kind of a fairy story are you handing me? Even in Washington I’ve never heard anything to top it. A gold machine! Working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Overtime for Sundays, I suppose?”

I was pretty sore and, as a result, pretty sarcastic.

Leander made no defense. He simply tossed the metal bar into a packing case and sighed mournfully.

“I told you,” he said tragically. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

He turned away and his skinny shoulders shook.

“The whole thing is simply absurd,” I said, defensively. A metal bar dropped into the receptacle and I picked it up automatically. I glanced at the machine in irritation.

“Why don’t you shut this damned thing off?” I demanded. “It’ll drive you crazy if you don’t.”

“It is driving me crazy,” Leander said wildly, “but I can’t turn it off. There isn’t any way to turn it off.”

I started to say something, then I changed my mind. Leander was hysterical, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice. I looked dubiously at the half-dozen or so halffilled packing cases and thought of the dozens more piled throughout the apartment. Maybe there wasn’t any way to turn the machine off. But that was silly. I’d be worse than Leander if I didn’t watch myself.

“Now, Leander,” I said, in my most soothing voice, “suppose you tell me the whole story.”

I felt it would do him good to talk. Also I knew if I didn’t get the whole story I was liable to go bats myself.

Leander turned and faced me and his features were lined and haggard. His prominent Adam’s apple moved in a sad gulp.

“All right,” he said tonelessly, “I’ll tell you the whole story. I invented a machine that would make gold, that’s all there is to it. I had the idea in college and I’ve worked on nothing else since I graduated.”

He waved a tired hand toward a paper-stuffed filing case in the corner.

“The formula is over there. It took me six months just to copy after I had figured it out. Building the machine was a year’s job. Four months ago it started to work.”

He paused and sighed heavily, despairingly.

“I was able to sell the first few bars. I moved here, built this laboratory. I was going to enjoy life.” He laughed bitterly. “But the machine wouldn’t stop. There isn’t any way to stop it. The gold kept piling up. Finally I had these packing cases delivered here and I’ve been storing the gold for the last two months. I can’t leave the apartment. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t do anything.”

The machine disgorged another metal bar. Leander picked it up, threw it into a packing case. I felt some of my doubt slipping away.

After all the machine had made a half dozen bars of metal while I was standing in the room. I scratched my head.

“Leander,” I said weakly, “is this stuff really gold? I mean, are you sure?”

“Of course it’s gold. I’ve had it analyzed by the best authorities in the city.”

He sagged against one of the packing cases and covered his eyes with his hands.

“God!” he groaned.

I frowned. “Well, what’s your problem? If all these cases are filled with gold I’d say you’re in a pretty nice spot. You’re about the only man I know who’d be annoyed by a super-abundance of the most precious metal in the world.”

“You don’t understand!” Leander cried tragically. “What can I do with it? I can’t sell it. It’s against the law to hoard it. And I’m running out of space.”

I lit a cigarette and started pacing. What a ridiculous situation! It was too fantastic to be funny.

“Just a minute,” I said suddenly, “there’s nothing for you to worry about. You haven’t done anything criminal. You’ve just invented a rather peculiar machine, that’s all. They won’t hang you for that.”

“You still don’t understand. I can’t turn this thing over to the government.”

“Why not?”

Leander waved his arms frantically.

“Think of what would happen. It would make our gold reserve valueless. Our entire monetary system would be destroyed. With all the other problems the government has, I can’t dump this into its lap. It might cripple our war effort. It might drive all the banks out of business. There’s no telling what might happen, not only in this country but all over the world, if the people realized that the value of all money had been undermined.”

I hadn’t thought of those things. They were worth thinking about. I started pacing again.

Another gold bar dropped into the slot. I started slightly. The damn thing did get on your nerves. The effect was probably something like the Chinese water torture. I felt a new pity for Leander. He’d been listening to those bars of gold fall for the last four months. No wonder he looked about ready to fly to pieces.

An idea occurred to me.

“Why don’t you get rid of some of the gold?” I asked. “That would relieve the congestion here and in the meantime you might think of some way to stop the machine.”

“I’ve tried,” Leander said dismally. “After the first month I started taking an armful out every night and throwing it into the river. That helped a little, but then one night a policeman almost caught me. I probably looked suspicious and he started after me. I barely had time to get rid of the gold bars and duck into an alley. It was close. If he’d caught me the jig would have been up.”

“How about giving it away?” I suggested hopefully.

Leander threw up his hands in despair.

“We can’t do that. Can you imagine what would happen if we stood on street corners giving bars of gold away?”

I could. That was out. I started pacing again and lit another cigarette.

“We’ve got to do something in a hurry,” Leander said. “In a little while it may be too late.”

“Why?”

“I’ll show you.”

He led the way down the corridor to the dining-room. I noticed that the dining-room floor creaked suspiciously as we stepped on it. Leander stood in the center of the room and stared gloomily about the piled-up crates.

“This floor is about ready to go,” he said.

“What?” I cried. I jumped back into the corridor. This was getting too much for me.

“I said this floor is about ready to give way,” Leander said calmly. He pointed to the intersection of the wall and floor. “Notice how the floor has sagged? It’s dropped a full inch already. This amount of gold is pretty heavy.”

I looked and saw that Leander was right. I swallowed. This was serious.

“We’ve got to do something,” I said.

“Sure,” Leander said, “but what?”

“I have an idea,” I said. “Do you have any paint handy?”

“I think there’s a can or two in the pantry,” Leander answered.

“Get it,” I said crisply, “there’s no time to wait. Then call a junk man.”

My plan was simple. We could paint the top layers in the boxes and then sell it as scrap metal. It wasn’t such a hot idea but it was all I could think of. At least it would relieve the pressure on the dining-room floor and then we could think of something else.

Leander returned with the paint, a scummy shade of brown. He listened to my plan without much enthusiasm, but he agreed that it was the only thing we could do.

I phoned a scavenger company while Leander ripped the lids of the gold-filled crates. We both pitched in on the paint job and we had barely finished when the back doorbell rang.

Leander started like a flushed rabbit.

“Who’s that?”

“I’ll get it,” I said. I walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. Two large gentlemen in overalls and blue denim jumpers were standing there.

“We’re from the junk yard,” one of them said. “You got some scrap iron here?”

“Why, yes,” I said, “come right in.”

“Thanks, bud. We thought it was some kind of a gag at first. This is the first pick-up we ever made on the Gold Coast.”

I winced. Couldn’t anybody talk without mentioning gold? I began to realize how Midas must have felt.

The two men followed me into the dining-room. I felt my nerves jump as their additional bulk was added to the already over-strained floor. We made a deal in a hurry. Already another idea was sizzling in my head and I wanted to talk to Leander about it. While the men carted the crates out of the room and down the back steps, I turned this idea over and over and I could find nothing wrong with it.

When the men had gone, taking with them five of the crates and the danger of an immediate debacle had been averted, I turned excitedly to Leander.

“Our problem is solved,” I announced with a pardonable touch of drama. “You will be bothered no longer with your gold machine.” Leander’s pale eyes lit up with a spark of hope. His fingers trembled excitedly.

“What have you figured out?” he demanded.

“The simplest thing in the world,” I said. “We’re going to ship it away.”

“Ship it away!” Leander echoed. His voice was a disappointed bleat. “What good will that do?”

“It is not merely shipping it away that will solve our problem,” I said, “but where we ship the gold machine is the master stroke that will relieve us of all responsibilities.”

“Well, where are we going to ship it?”

“Fort Knox, Kentucky,” I said dramatically.

“What good—” Leander stopped in the middle of the sentence and gazed at me with dawning admiration. “I see,” he murmured. “The heart of the government’s gold reserve is at Fort Knox.”

“Exactly,” I said. “They can keep this machine a secret; in fact they’ll have to. They get a steady supply of gold to add to their stock and your problem is solved.”

“You’re a genius,” Leander said fervently.

“Quite probably,” I said. “Now let’s get moving. I’ll phone an express company and you start crating the gold machine. I’ll be back to give you a hand in a minute.”

I strode into the front room and made the call. Then I walked back through the apartment to Leander’s laboratory. Just as I reached the door I heard a loud metallic crash within the room.

I stepped into the room and found Leander picking himself up from the floor. The gold machine was lying in a heap beside the table on which it had rested.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I stumbled,” Leander explained apologetically. “I picked up the machine and my foot slipped and I fell. I don’t think it hurt the machine.”

“Unfortunately, it probably didn’t,” I said.

I dragged an empty crate to the center of the room and, with Leander’s help, hoisted the gold machine into it. We wadded newspapers on all four sides and then nailed a top onto the crate.

“That’ll do it,” I said. “Your worries are pretty close to being over.”

We paced up and down the floor until the truck driver from the express company arrived. The machine wasn’t very heavy but the express charges came, to fourteen dollars and twenty six cents. I paid it cheerfully.

Leander and I lifted the crate to the shoulders of the expressman and he staggered down the back stairs with it, taking the gold machine out of our lives forever.

Leander was so excited and jubilant that it was positively pathetic. I felt fine too, except that I was developing what seemed to be a bad toothache. I mentioned this to Leander and he went into the laboratory to get me something for it.

He wasn’t gone more than twenty seconds before I heard his shrill shout blasting through the apartment.

I forgot my toothache and dashed toward the laboratory.

Leander was standing in the middle of the room, gazing wildly at the crates lining the wall.

“What the hell’s the matter?” I demanded.

“Look!” he pointed to the crates with a trembling finger.

I stared and my heart seemed to stop. My stomach turned a leisurely flip-flop.

For the crates were completely empty! The gold bars, with which the crates had been more than half-filled, had vanished into thin air.

“What happened?” I asked weakly. I had the feeling however that I would rather not know.

“I’m afraid to even guess,” Leander whispered. He stared at me, stricken and frightened. “I think the gold machine started working in reverse, decomposing the gold it had created. Maybe the fall did it.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” I said. “There’s a perfectly logical explan—”

I stopped and very slowly raised my hand to my mouth. My finger touched the tooth that had started aching. The gold filling was gone!

“I think you’re right, Leander,” I said very quietly. “Undoubtedly the gold machine is working in reverse.”

“And we sent it to Fort Knox,” he said in a tragic whisper. “‘What will happen to the twelve billions of dollars in gold the government has stored there?”

I sat down and put my head in my hands.

“If you don’t mind, Leander,” I said, “I would prefer not to think about that just now.”

“But what will the government do?” I lifted my head from my hands. I thought about that and my spirits began to rise. The greatest government in the world shouldn’t have any difficulty with this problem. Hell, they’d probably never even miss the twelve billion dollars.

The Picture of Death

First published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

When I walked into Harry Saunders’ office on the tenth floor of Republic Magazines’ new building, he looked up from his desk and nodded pleasantly.

“Sit down,” he said, waving me to a chair beside his desk. “Smoke?”

I sat down, accepted the cigarette and lit it carefully. From Saunders’ manner I began to hope he might have good news.

“Well, what’s the verdict?” I asked, trying to make the question as casual as possible. I’m afraid I didn’t quite succeed in that attempt. It isn’t easy to act unconcerned when your week’s meals and lodgings depend on an art director’s decision.

Saunders didn’t answer immediately. He leaned back in his chair and took a great deal of time in lighting his cigarette. I knew he was stalling. He was a nice guy and he didn’t like to say no soap. But he finally got around to it.

He looked at me with troubled eyes. “Id like to buy your illustrations,” he said, “but there’s an element of reality lacking. Your backgrounds are okay, your composition is nice, but your male characters just don’t have the brutality and toughness they should.”

I smiled bitterly and shrugged my shoulders.

“If I haven’t got it, I haven’t got it,” I said. “I’ve been in the ‘art’ business for a dozen years, but I’m learning that ‘art’ hasn’t got anything to do with making a living with magazine illustrations. Thanks, Harry, you’ve done the best anyone could for a misguided mural painter.”

I crushed out the cigarette and stood up, but Harry said, “Wait a minute.” He stood up and stepped around his desk.

“Don’t let a few rejections lick you,” he said. “At least, try once more. Do a villain for me, a rough, tough, nasty gent that I can really be scared of. Forget the background and incidental characters.”

“Okay,” I said, and moved to the door. “I’ll do it tonight and bring it in first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, by the way,” Harry said. He coughed and looked away in embarrassment. “If you could use a few bucks for a while—”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be okay, Harry.”

I opened the door and walked down the corridor to the elevators. Outside the building it was rapidly getting dark, and a soft snow was falling on the hurrying pedestrians.

I turned my collar up and started walking. An hour later I let myself into my bleak, cold, cramped attic-studio. I turned on the light over my drawing board and then turned up the gas under the coffee pot.

I had never been a fast craftsman and I knew that the job of drawing one character would take most of the night. I didn’t particularly look forward to the hours that stretched ahead of me. Drawing is hard work for me.

Work that I love, but, nevertheless, work.

While the coffee was heating, I blocked in a frame for my main figure. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what my character would be. Not having the money to afford models, I was forced to use my imagination in creating illustrations.

As I sat before the board, toying with ideas, I happened to glance out the window and see, across the narrow court, the figure of a man outlined against a window.

He had his back to the window, but as I watched, he turned and I had a full view of his features. They were brutal and coarse, and in his small, deep-sunk eyes there was something unimaginably evil. From his shoulders and arms I could see that he was powerfully built, probably of enormous strength. His hair was coarse and black.

The light in his room shone full on his face, and I was able to analyze each feature and line carefully.

Automatically I picked up my drawing pencil. I was hardly conscious of what I was doing, so absorbed was I in the man across the court. Something in the bestial brutality of his features fired my imagination, inflamed my senses and set my heart pounding.

My pencil flashed across the drawing paper with swift, sure strokes. I had never drawn with such ease and effect in my entire career. It was as if some psychic influence was at work, driving me on, ordering my thoughts and directing my hand.

I was afraid, terribly afraid, that the man would turn away from the light before I completed the sketch.

I worked furiously, studying my subject with white-hot concentration, and feverishly transmitting the almost sadistic brutality of his features to the drawing paper.

At last the thing was done. And at that same second the man across the court turned away from his window, and the light in his room disappeared.

I felt enormously lucky and strangely exhilarated.

I studied the drawing carefully. It was simply done, yet there was an undeniable impact in its effect. I had caught the essence of chilling evil that, to my eyes at least, was stamped unmistakably on the face of the man across the court.

I felt like celebrating. Here, the job I had been dreading as an all-night session was completed in ten minutes. But most gratifying was the realization that I had done a coldly realistic piece of work. The illustration was good, I knew. Something of myself, and something from my subject had merged together to create this drawing.

With a rare feeling of jubilance I went to the closet and took down one of my cherished possessions, a full pint of good whiskey. I had been saving it until I had something to celebrate, and this seemed the proper occasion.

I had three drinks in a row, silently toasting myself each time. I am not accustomed to liquor, and when I finally lay down on my cot, my head was spinning very pleasantly.

When I awoke it was morning.

A faint early light was creeping in through the window, and I had a bad headache. I still had my clothes on.

I stood up and pressed my hands to my temples. Gradually the memory of the previous evening returned. I didn’t feel so bad then. At least I had a good piece of work to show Saunders.

I washed, changed my shirt and, feeling almost normal again, I drew back the shades and let the North light pour into the room. I was anxious to inspect the drawing in the sometimes damning light of day.

I swung the drawing board around, and let the clear morning light splash over the illustration I’d done of the man across the court.

The sight that met my eyes caused me to gasp in astonished horror.

The illustration was completely changed!

The figure of the man was bent in a crouch, and his lips were flattened against his teeth in demoniacal leer. In his hooked, talon-like hands was an axe, smeared and bloody.

And, most horrible of all, between his spread feet was the form of a young girl, her head hacked almost completely from her shoulders.

I sat down, my knees suddenly weak. The horrible force of the gruesome drawing was physically staggering.

The illustration was a masterpiece of macabre horror.

But who had done it? The central figure was mine, but had someone visited my room in the dead of night to add the gruesome details of the murder?

I stared at the illustration for many long minutes. There was something plucking at my subconscious, some psychic half-memory of this scene, as if possibly I had dreamed or imagined it years ago.

I shook my head irritably at this thought. I was indulging in a form of self-hypnosis, trying to convince myself of something or other.

There was a rational explanation to this phenomenon, I told myself firmly. The style of the art was mine throughout the picture. I recognized that instantly. Therefore I had drawn in the figure of the murdered girl, changed my central character into a bestial maniacal killer, dramatized the illustration into a blood-chilling picture.

That much was obvious. But how had I done all this? And why did I have no recollection of it?

There was only one answer to both those questions. I must have changed the illustration during my drink-befogged sleep. That was the only logical solution. Possibly the unaccustomed stimulus of the alcohol had provided the subconscious impetus to return to the drawing board and re-design the illustration.

Possibly...

I removed the illustration from the drawing board and rolled it up tightly.

There was no sense worrying about the thing. It was done; that was that. This realistic view comforted me more had my attempts at rationalization. I left my studio with the illustration under my arm and walked uptown to the Republic Magazines’ building.

When I spread the illustration on Harry Saunders’ desk, a half hour later, his eyes brightened with interest and he stood up excitedly.

“Now you’ve got it,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “This picture has got some guts to it. It’s realistic and convincing.”

He stared a long moment at the illustration.

“Did you get the idea for this scene from the morning newspaper?” he asked abruptly.

“No,” I said, surprised. “I got it from—”

My voice and thoughts trailed away. Where had I got the idea?

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “I haven’t seen the morning papers yet. Was there some sort of murder last night?”

Saunders shuddered slightly.

“A very unpretty one, if we may judge from the harrowing details of our melodramatic reporters. Young girl, axe killer, lonely wharf. Maniac probably.”

For some reason, my thoughts were spinning crazily.

“I didn’t know a thing about it,” I said harshly.

“Okay, okay,” Saunders grinned. “It doesn’t make any difference one way or the other. I don’t care whether you get your ideas from the daily papers or the telephone book. The important thing now is that I want more work from you. This illustration has got what it takes. Now get back to your studio and turn out as many you can just like it. And stick to this main figure of the villain. You’ve got something there. He looks bad enough to be real.”

“All right,” I said.

“I’ll have a check for you tomorrow on this job,” Saunders said. “As long as you can keep up this kind of work, you’re all set.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

I left his office and my feelings were difficult to analyze. I should have been riotously happy at having finally made the grade with Republic Magazines, but for some reason my happiness was tempered with another emotion I could not define.

On the street I bought a paper and carefully read the story of the murder Saunders mentioned. This action was in itself unexplainable. Normally such things do not interest me, but now I read the story avidly.

The girl’s body was awaiting identification; the axe killer was still at large. Police were of the opinion that it was the work of a maniac. That was the substance of the story.

I frowned and walked on. When I reached my studio it was about noon. I had a little something to eat, then I sat down at my drawing board.

The strong North light was streaming over my shoulder and every condition was favorable to work, but for some reason I couldn’t recapture the feeling and mood that I had experienced the previous day.

I tried a dozen times to draw from memory the man I’d seen across the court, but it was worse than futile. Each succeeding attempt became less and less what I wanted, until I finally tore the sheet from the board, and with an exclamation of disgust, hurled it to the floor.

The afternoon passed and darkness fell swiftly. I turned on the light over my easel and made another desperate attempt to get to work. While I was seated there, concentrating on the scene in my mind, the light across the court flicked on, and I saw my subject again, silhouetted against the illumination in his room.

He was pacing up and down the floor with slow measured strides. The court that separated our windows was only a dozen feet wide, and I could see details in the room very clearly.

I could see his huge hands clasped behind his back and I could see the black scowl on his face with almost frightening distinctness.

Even more than the first time, I was impressed with the malignant evil that seemed to emanate from the man’s broad brutal face and close-set, blazing eyes.

Again, without conscious volition on my part, I reached for my drawing pencil and began to sketch feverishly. There seemed to be some psychic connection between this ugly brute across the court, and my own mind. When I studied him for a while something seemed to take possession of me, driving me to work, to create scenes which had before been foreign to my imagination.

I was drawing a background now, hastily sketching in a vacant lot, complete with shrubbery, refuse pile and an abandoned incinerator. In the distance were small bungalows with lights burning in the front room. It was night. The moon was shadowed by a passing cloud, and there was an oppressive, eerie stillness over the entire scene.

I began to draw a character. It was the man across the court. Without glancing from my drawing board I blocked in a figure with heavy massive shoulders, swinging arms with curved fingers, slightly bent knees, crouching along the shrubbery that flanked the lonely path leading through the vacant lot to the bungalow. The face was twisted and inhuman, one half in shadow, the other caught in the glare of a street light. One blazing eye, one distended nostril and half of the thick, slavering lips were visible, a horrible, incomplete picture of a creature from the bowels of hell.

I finished the figure rapidly. Every stroke was sure and definite, there was no hesitation, no erasure, nothing but swift sure delineation.

When I finished the picture I was almost in a trance. My work had been so automatic, so instinctive, that I had been unaware of the passage of time. I had been caught in the flow of some indefiniable force and had been swept along in a creative frenzy, which was as effective as it was mysterious.

For the drawing was good. It had a chilling horror to it that was breathtaking. The human, yet inhuman figure, crouching along the path, lying in wait like some savage jungle creature. Lying in wait...

Lying in wait for what?

I didn’t know.

With a shake of my head I tried to dislodge the thoughts that were battering at my consciousness. A mist seemed to rise from my eyes and mind and I found myself looking at the drawing through clear eyes. I had been in a kind of self-induced hypnotic state. The emotional outlet that occurred with creative work, might have the effect of dulling one’s more ordinary perceptions.

Everything was very quiet. I glanced across the court and saw that my subject’s room was dark. I wondered when he had left.

I took the drawing from the board then and sealed it in a special size envelope, for I had decided to mail this drawing in to Saunders. I didn’t intend to go back to Republic for a day or so and postage was the quickest and cheapest way of getting the picture to him.

I mailed the drawing that night. Two days later, about ten o’clock in the morning, I entered Saunders’ office.

He sprang to his feet when he saw me and walked around his desk to pump my hand.

“Glad to see you,” he said, fairly bristling with camaraderie.

“What did you think of the picture I sent in?” I asked. I had an idea of what he would say.

“Terrific!” he exploded. “Absolutely terrific! I’ve been looking for material like that for years. It was so damn convincing it almost scared the life out of me when I took it out of the envelope. Realistic? Boy!”

“Thanks,” I said. My lack of enthusiasm must have been quite noticeable, for he said,

“Why so gloomy? You haven’t a thing in the world to worry about now. Your style is right in the groove at last, and as long as you use the daily newspapers, you’ll never have to worry about your background and scenes.”

“The newspapers?” I said. A chill feeling crept gradually over me, bringing with it a nameless illogical horror. I had done nothing to be afraid of, my actions were, so far as I knew, blameless. Yet I felt suddenly like cringing into the darkest corner of the room I could find.

“Why, yes, the newspapers.” Saunders laughed in answer to my questioning tone. “You remember that first illustration you did, based on the hatchet murder at the wharf?”

“I didn’t get that illustration idea from the newspaper story,” I said, and my voice was tonelessly flat.

Saunders grinned and stuck a cigarette into his mouth.

“I believed you the first time when you said that, but not any more. This last picture you did was taken smack from the Jackson Heights murder, wasn’t it?”

“No, no,” I said. I was trembling slightly, and the words came out in a stuttering rush.

“Don’t get excited about it,” Saunders said, but he looked at me rather queerly. “If you want to protect your source of ideas, that’s perfectly okay. As I said once, it doesn’t matter to me where the hell you get your inspiration. But this last case was pretty obvious.” A horrible premonition was creeping over me.

“Let me see my last illustration,” I said. I tried desperately to control my voice, to check the hysteria that was mounting in my breast.

“Sure thing,” Saunders said. “I haven’t given it to an author yet. It’s right here.”

He walked over to a long open file beside his desk and pulled out an illustration pasted against a cardboard background. He set it on his desk, flicked a strong light against it.

“There it is,” he said; “a beautiful job.”

I stared at the illustration and I tried to speak, but it was impossible. My mouth was dry with horror that was as deep as the pit of hell.

My heart was pounding slowly, heavily, painfully.

The illustration had been changed. It was not the same drawing that I had mailed to Saunders two nights before. The background was the same, vacant lot, bungalows with lighted fronts, but—

The figure of the hulking evil brute had changed! Instead of crouching behind the shrubbery that lined the lot’s pathway, he was kneeling on the prone figure of an elderly man, and his mighty hands were closed about his neck.

My character, the character that had been inspired by the man across the court from my studio, was committing another murder. The expression of lustful brutality on his face was sickening.

“It’s not pretty,” Saunders said, “but it’s effective as hell. You can’t deny that you got the idea for that illustration from the Jackson Heights murder.”

“What happened at Jackson Heights?” I asked dully.

Saunders looked at me as if I were losing my mind.

“Are you kidding?” he demanded. “The papers have been full of nothing else for the last forty-eight hours. Seems some elderly duck was crossing a lot out in Jackson Heights, and some madman attacked and killed him. Broke his neck in two places. It was a very nasty mess. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. I haven’t been feeling so well the last few days,” I said weakly. I leaned against the edge of his desk for support. “Answer me one question, please, Harry. Did you see this illustration of mine, immediately after it was taken from the envelope?”

“Of course,” he answered. “I opened the envelope. Why?”

“The scene was just as it is now?” I said, clenching my hands nervously. “You haven’t made any — changes?”

“Naturally not,” Saunders said. “This is the way the picture arrived and this is the way we’re going to use it. No one has touched it. You can see that at a glance. Every bit of that picture is your work. It stands out all over it.”

“Thanks,” I said. My mind was in a seething turmoil. “I’ve got to be leaving now. Thanks again.”

“Keep up the good work,” Saunders said. He laughed. “We want realism in the art work here. And I don’t care if you commit the murders yourself, they’ve got to be real. So long.”

I shuddered as I left his office.

I felt as if I might be sick. My thoughts were churning wildly. When I reached my studio hours later, after tramping endlessly the city streets, I collapsed in the chair before my drawing board, and stared at the drawing paper with dazed sightless eyes. I had to think. But my brain was numb with horror. This whole nightmarish business was so incomprehensible, so mysterious, so damnably incredible that my reason rebelled at accepting the conclusions my instinct presented.

Who had changed the last illustration? That was an unanswerable question. Could it be that there was some psychic connection between that drawing and the brutal murder of an old man in Jackson Heights?

Could it have been a human agency?

I buried my head in my hands and groaned in the empty darkness of the room. I had mailed that picture to Saunders as soon as I had completed it. My theory in regard to the first picture would not apply in this second instance. It couldn’t have been an act I unknowingly performed in my sleep — because the illustration was not in the studio that night; it was in the city post office.

How long I sat in the dark of my studio I have no way of knowing, but after a while I became aware of a light in the room across the court. How long it had been on, I couldn’t say.

I stared across the court into the lighted room and I saw the man who had inspired both of my illustrations. He was sitting in a chair facing the window, in almost the same position I was sitting. But he did not seem to be looking at me.

Rather he was staring past, or through me. How long he had been sitting there was a conjectural matter. His dark brutal face was half in the shadow, and his small burning eyes were almost concealed by lowered lids.

On his heavy loose lips I could see the light reflecting from a slavering wetness. I stared at him for several minutes, and gradually the compulsion to draw came over me in an irresistible wave.

I turned to my board and picked up a pencil. There was enough light from his window for me to see by, and I went to work, furiously, feverishly.

I wasn’t sure what I was drawing. My pencil moved almost independently of my will. My mind, my reason, seemed curiously separate and apart from the figure and background that swiftly developed on the drawing paper.

I felt as if I were watching the scene objectively, but taking no part in it myself. I saw the pencil moving, but I felt it moved of itself. I heard its faint scratch as it moved over the paper, but it was a far away sound. The darkness of the room, the quietness of the night, the stillness of the air, these things seemed real and tangible, but the drawing was an abstraction apart from me.

In spite of my detachment, I could feel the power and the force of the indefinable inspiration that had seized my will and intellect and drove them on at such a feverish haste.

What was I drawing?

I forced myself to look at my work. It was him. I had drawn him in a standing position, but I hadn’t completed his background.

A tenseness was creeping into my fingers, but I worked on desperately. I felt suddenly excited and exhilarated. I glanced across the court and, although the light was still blazing, the man had left the window.

I wheeled back to the drawing board and worked with redoubled speed. Everything depended on finishing this drawing. Why, I didn’t know.

“I must, I must!” I said aloud.

Now I seemed to sweep along on a wave that was hurling me forward with increasing speed each second. My hand moved so quickly that my eyes could not follow it, and the background of the main figure was swiftly falling into place. In a minute I would be through. Even as that thought came to me I knew a moment of black horror.

Sheer black horror of the unknown, of the nameless, of all that dread darkness which man is ever fleeing.

In a moment the picture would be completed!

My instinct screamed at me to hurl the pencil from my fingers, to rip the sheet from the board, but my hand moved on, inexorably, inevitably, beyond the control of my will.

The last strokes were completed in a frantic rush.

I was through!

There was a complete, terrible silence in the room. I studied the illustration I had just completed, and gradually the mist lifted from my mind and sanity returned slowly.

I had drawn him standing in a doorway. In his knotted fist was an axe.

I shook my head slowly. I felt as if I were coming up for air, after hours of swimming helplessly through suffocating water.

The picture I had drawn was of a familiar scene. It was so familiar that for a moment I was unable to place it. I frowned and studied the illustration carefully.

Suddenly a cold, nauseating horror shook me.

“My God!” I whispered.

The scene I had depicted was that of my own studio!

I leaned forward, hardly daring to believe my eyes. But my eyes had not lied. A convulsive shudder shook my frame as I stared at that scene depicted on the drawing board.

I had drawn my own studio as the setting for his next crime!

Suddenly, in the still black silence of the room, I heard a board creak faintly.

I froze into immobility. My heart pounded madly.

The board creaked again... closer.

I fought back the scream that tore against my throat. With a courage that I did not dream I possessed, I wheeled suddenly and faced the door.

He was there — just as I had drawn him.

Mad, burning eyes, slavering jaws, rasping breath... he stood in the doorway, mighty shoulders hunched, a hand clenched about the handle of an axe.

With a white flash of understanding I knew why I had drawn the picture of my studio, lured this monster here. In some psychic way his actions and my illustrations were linked inseparably. I was his next victim! It was only right that I should be.

His heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. Then a board creaked and I knew he had stepped closer.

I knew he was ready to lunge. My feet dug into the floor, as I saw the gleaming head of the axe flash over his head.

Then he lunged!

I sprang sideways from the chair and his great bulk sprawled over me. The axe cut through the air and crashed into the drawing table. I heard a horrible gurgling sound, as I pulled myself to my knees.

There was a black bulk on the floor of the studio. The axe lay near the body, its head dull with a sticky redness.

I staggered to my feet and turned on the light. He was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. His head was almost severed from his body.

My eyes moved to the drawing board.

His axe had slashed through the illustration I had just drawn.

His figure in the drawing was almost decapitated by the four inch rent the axe had made in the paper.

The other figure in the drawing was untouched. I was the other figure

The Tireless Leg

First published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1942.

Chapter I

The man lying on the bed in the dingy room was flabby and pale; his bloated cheeks were shadowed with two days’ growth of beard; his eyes were a weak watery blue.

A sharp, insistent knock sounded suddenly on the door and the man on the bed raised himself on one elbow. He was wearing cheap, flashy clothes that were now baggy and wrinkled.

“Who is it?” he said.

“You know right enough who it is,” an angry feminine voice shouted back. “It’s Mrs. MacDougal and I want none of your fine airs, Silas Harker. You can’t lay around in my rooms day after day and give me nothing but your malarkey when it comes time to pay-up. If you don’t pay up today, out you go and no mistake.”

Silas Harker climbed to his feet and slouched across the room, his face set in bitter lines. He opened the door. Mrs. MacDougal was standing in the narrow, dirty hall, arms akimbo. She was a solid, stout woman with a red face and graying hair.

“I want my rent money,” she said bluntly. “You owe me now for three weeks. If you can’t pay up, out you go and no mistake. I’m tired of your shilly-shallying. It’s hard enough to run an honest—”

“Let’s don’t go into that,” Silas Harker said wearily. He fished into his vest pocket and brought forth the carefully preserved stub of a cigarette, lit it and blew a cloud of smoke toward the dirty ceiling. He ran a pale thin hand over his whiskered, sallow cheeks and regarded his landlady with bitter eyes.

“You’ll get your money,” he said. “And when I pay you I’ll leave this flea-infested fire trap so fast your eyes will blink. When I say goodbye to this hole and to your fish-wife nagging I’ll be the happiest man in the city of Chicago. Don’t think I’m staying here because I like it.”

“Well,” Mrs. MacDougal said, slightly taken aback by the venom in his voice, “that’s a fine way to repay my goodness to you. Here I’ve let you stay in my house, trusting you ’till you found some work, and now you flare at me like an ungrateful dog. I like your crust, I do.”

“Well, thank you for your charity,” Harker said with heavy sarcasm. His face tightened and his eyes changed to a wild, angry gleam. “I could buy fifty hovels like this,” he snarled, “if it weren’t—”

“More of your big talk,” Mrs. MacDougal broke in impatiently. “I’ve heard enough of it and no mistake. If you had a rich father and he did cut you out of the will, like you’re always claimin’, I can surely understand why. You’re nothin’ but an ungrateful pup, Silas Harker, and I’ve had enough of your alibis and airs. Out you go tonight unless you pay-up in full. And no mistake about it.”

With a final glare Mrs. MacDougal turned and clumped off down the corridor. Silas Harker stared after her bitterly, before re-entering his room and stretching out again on the bed. He reached automatically for the bottle on the night table and poured himself a drink of the cheap whisky it contained.

He drained the glass at a single gulp. The fiery liquor burned his throat, almost gagging him. He lay back on the bed, gasping, feeling the warming effect of the whisky coursing through his body. A spot of color tinged his cheeks and he felt stronger.

“Damn her,” he said, “damn her to hell.”

There was a dry chuckle from the doorway.

“So,” a soft voice said, “you do not approve of our excellent landlady, t-h?”

Silas Harker raised himself on an elbow and squinted at the man standing in the doorway of his room. He was a small man, stooped and bent, with a bald, domed head and bright, piercing eyes. Harker recognized him as one of the tenants of the rooming house, a Dr. Something-or-other, who occupied a room a few doors from his own.

Harker lay back on the bed and reached again for the bottle.

“No I don’t,” he said. He finished his drink and looked at the Doctor, who was still standing in the doorway, watching him with his hard bright eyes. “But I can’t see where it’s any of your business,” he added.

“You are in a charming mood, today,” the Doctor said with mild irony. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Silas Harker shrugged.

“Come ahead if you care to. But if you’re here to borrow money, save your breath.”

The Doctor entered the room and closed the door carefully behind him. He seated himself on the spare chair.

“That is not the purpose of my visit,” he said.

“Then what’s the angle?” Harker asked, squinting cynically at him. “Don’t tell me yours is an errand of mercy, comforting the forlorn and needy, or something like that?”

“Hardly,” the Doctor said. “I’m not a philanthropist. My presence here is the result of a very mundane and materialistic idea. There is nothing noble or altruistic in my idea; but there might be a handsome profit in it — for both of us.”

Harker looked at him to make sure that he was serious. The Doctor’s small pinched face was perfectly grave and his eyes were as sharp as daggers. Harker sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m listening. But I am not in the mood for jokes.”

“This is no joke. First, let me introduce myself. I am Doctor Henrich Zinder. During the last war I was with the Imperial German Army’s medical corps. Since then—”

Harker nodded. “You’ve been on your uppers.” His glance touched the Doctor’s frayed clothes briefly. “You look it. Now get to the point. What’s this profitable deal you spoke about?”

“You are right,” Doctor Henrich Zinder said. “I have been, as you say, on my uppers. But I have not been idle. I have continued to work on my experiments, but the stupid morons of the medical world refuse even to listen to what I have accomplished. And I have accomplished miracles.”

“Okay,” Harker said. “Granting all that, I’m still waiting to hear your proposition. The world is full of crackpots, Doctor, who think they’ve accomplished miracles; so you’re sales talk had better be convincing.”

Doctor Zinder smiled faintly.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said, “but if you will hear me out I think I can change your opinion of me. First, let me ask you, Mr. Harker, what are your plans for the immediate future?”

“Why?” Harker said surlily. “My plans happen to be my own business. Oh, I guess it doesn’t make any difference anyway, though.” He lit a cigarette with a nervous hand. “I’m going into the army, I suppose. There’s nothing else to do. I’m thirty-five, in fair health, so I’ll be inducted in a few months.”

Doctor Zinder leaned forward. The light from the window gleamed on his high-domed bald head. His little eyes were sharp and speculative.

“Do you want to go into the army?” he asked. “Do you want to trade your freedom for a miserable pittance each month? Are you looking forward to wearing coarse woolen uniforms, eating slop, drilling under hot suns until you’re ready to collapse? Will it be pleasant to have some illiterate sergeant order you about like a dog?”

Harker sucked slowly on his cigarette.

“That’s dangerous talk in these times,” he said softly. “Supposing I reported you for what you’ve just said?”

“I don’t think you will,” Dr. Zinder smiled. “You see, I know you pretty well. I know how you feel about these things. And you may trust me, Silas Harker.”

“Why should I trust you?” Harker said coldly.

“Hear me out. It is true, is it not, that your father was a very wealthy man?”

“Yes,” Harker said with savage bitterness, “that’s true. My father’s estate right now is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I’m forced to live in a hovel like this, hardly knowing where my next miserable meal is coming from. But what’s that to you?”

“I feel for you, my boy,” Doctor Zinder said gently. “I appreciate what a grave injustice has been done you. So touched was I by your plight that I determined to do something about it. And I think possibly I have hit upon a scheme which might help you to regain what is rightfully yours. That is the profitable idea I have mentioned.”

“If you’re thinking about breaking my father’s will, it’s impossible,” Harker said. “I’ve seen the best lawyers in the country about that and none of them has given me the slightest hope. My father disowned and disinherited me for—” He broke off and glared at the Doctor. “Why he disinherited me is none of your business.”

“I know why he disinherited you,” Doctor Zinder said, smiling. “I mentioned that I knew you rather well. I have gone to considerable trouble to look up your background. It was that little matter of the disappearance of quite a sum of money from his wall safe, wasn’t it? That, plus your drinking and gambling and other ungentlemanly habits you picked up here and there.”

Silas Harker ran a hand over his slack jaw. The muscles in his pale face twitched uncontrollably. The strength seemed to flow from his veins. His thin courage melted and he stared nervously at the Doctor.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to look me up,” he said weakly.

“Yes,” Doctor Zinder said carefully, “I have. But do not be alarmed, my boy. My investigations were for our mutual benefit. Let me ask you this: Have you ever read your father’s will?”

“Yes. The entire estate is willed to an elderly couple who kept house for him. They are having rather a hard time getting along while the will is being probated, but in a few months they come into all of his money and they’ll be set for life. A stupid, senile pair of fools, that’s what they are.”

“That is right,” Doctor Zinder said. “And you are left, as you say, out in the cold. However, there is one important clause in the will which is interesting. If,” the doctor tapped his finger carefully on his knee, “you are in any way incapacitated and unable to earn a living for yourself, the property reverts to you. You are aware of that?”

“Of course,” Harker said irritably. “But there’s nothing wrong with me. Just my luck to be good army-bait and nothing else.”

“Now we are finally getting around to my little proposition,” Doctor Zinder said. “What would be your reaction if I were to tell you that it is possible for me to arrange things so that you will come into your rightful inheritance and stay out of the army?” Harker stared at the Doctor and a slow excitement crept through his thoughts.

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” he said hoarsely. “If you could fix things — but no! It’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

“I would not be so sure of that, my boy,” Doctor Zinder said. “I say definitely that it can be one, but—” He paused and studied Harker thoughtfully, a faint humorless smile curving his lips.

“But what?” Harker cried. He stood up, towering over the slight figure of the doctor, his fists clenched. “Tell me, damn you,” he said excitedly. “I won’t be played with like a baby.”

“Calmly, my friend,” Doctor Zinder said. “Listen to me carefully now. If you were to — ah — lose a leg you would thereby become eligible to benefit under the terms of your father’s will. Is that not so?”

Harker sank back on the bed, his eyes widening with horror.

“Yes,” he said thickly, “then I would—” His voice faltered and he stared at the doctor’s wrinkled face with sudden revulsion. “Is that your plan?” he cried. Panic rose in his breast as the doctor continued to regard him in silence. “Yes, that is your idea! You want to hack me up like a butchered hog, don’t you?”

“You are leaping to conclusions,” the Doctor murmured. “Part of what you say is true, I admit, but hear me out. In the years since I left Germany I have experimented exclusively with amputation and artificial grafting. The results I have obtained would rock the medical world were they known. I have perfected a technique of grafting human limbs onto live bodies. Skin grafting is common but I undertook to graft the muscles, bone and nerves together in the same manner. Do you see now what I am getting at?”

Harker pressed his hands to his temples. His brain seemed to be racing furiously, but he was unable to think coherently.

“No, no,” he gasped, “I don’t know what you mean and I don’t want to know.”

“I will be explicit. If you lost a leg in an accident you would become the beneficiary of your father’s will, for you would be incapacitated and unable to support yourself. Also you would be deferred from military service. That much you can follow, yes? Good. Now listen carefully. I can give you a new leg. A flesh and blood leg as good or better than the one you will lose. This operation will only take a few months. At the end of that time you will have a perfect leg. No one will know of this. It will be presumed that you have gotten yourself an artificial leg. You will have the complete estate of your father and freedom to do as you please; for the army doctors will have deferred you from service. Do you understand now what I mean?”

“Y — yes,” Harker faltered. “I see.” He looked guiltily about the room, as if fearful of being overheard. “But how do I know you can get me a new leg? If you fail I’ll go through life a cripple, helpless—”

“Even if I did fail,” the doctor said, “it would not be too bad. You would have money, life would be pleasant for you.”

“No!” Harker cried hoarsely. He looked down at his legs and shuddered. “I must be sure.”

“Do not be alarmed,” Doctor Zinder said. “I said ‘if’ I failed. I will not fail. You do not have to take my word for that. I will let you examine completely the record of my experiments over the past twenty-five years and you will see things that I have done. Have no fear. You will be convinced. Within three months after you lose your leg I will have grafted another one in place for you. And it will be a perfect leg.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” Harker said. “What do you want out of this deal for yourself?”

“When you inherit your father’s estate you will be a wealthy man. I need money. We will work something out that will be satisfactory to both of us, I think. That is a trifle.” Harker stood up and paced up and down the floor. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He ran a hand through his thinning, sandy hair. His mind ran in circles like a caged rat. Doubts assailed him and his skin grew feverish. Amputation! The word had a horrible sound. A cold, gleaming knife poised to slice— No! He bit his lower lip until the salty taste of the blood was in his mouth.

But his greed was great. The thought of his father’s money, tantalizingly close to his grasp, was maddening. All the things he had lusted for in his poverty would be his again, if he took this step. Could he trust this man?

“You want money?” he said jerkily to the doctor.

“That is correct.”

Harker’s breath became ragged as his suspicion grew.

“Why don’t you sell this technique of yours?” he snarled. “That should bring you millions. Damn you, what’s your game?”

“Who would buy it?” Doctor Zinder said gently. “The government? Hardly. They might take it, use it, but such things are never sold. They become public property when their discovery is announced. It is not so much altruism but the force of public opinion that makes doctors release the rights of their discoveries for the public welfare. Also there is a slight matter of pride. The fools have ridiculed my ideas and theories for two decades. Am I to crawl to them again, begging respectfully that they take my grafting technique as a gift? In that case I would not even receive the credit for the discovery.”

“All right, all right,” Harker snapped. He paced the floor, thudding his right fist into his left hand. He stopped suddenly in front of the doctor.

“Where will you get the leg?” he demanded.

Doctor Zinder smiled and his face was unpleasantly shadowed.

“That is a mere detail,” he murmured. “You may leave that in my hands. Have you made up your mind?”

Harker’s breath came in shuddering gasps and his fingers were tightened into straining fists.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve made up my mind.”

Chapter II

Five weeks later Silas Harker was wheeled into the luxuriously furnished private office of Counselor Morton Fortescue, senior partner of the law firm of Fortescue and Higgins.

Harker was in a wheel chair. One shod foot was visible against the foot-rest of the chair. The other was conspicuously missing.

Counselor Fortescue was seated behind a wide mahogany desk. At his side were an elderly, white-haired couple, with bewildered, apprehensive expressions on their tired faces. There was a secretary at the opposite side of the desk with a notebook pad in her hand.

Counselor Fortescue was a heavy-set man with pendulous jowls and snapping brown eyes. He looked up and nodded to Silas Harker.

“It’s been some time, Silas, since I’ve seen you,” he said. “Sorry to meet you again under such — er — unhappy circumstances.”

Harker smiled wanly but didn’t answer. His face was pale and drawn and there were lines about his mouth that had not been there a month before. But his eyes were sharp with a new cunning and sense of power.

“You — er — may come up closer to the desk,” Counselor Fortescue said. “It will be easier for us all if we can hear each other clearly.”

Harker looked over his shoulder. Doctor Zinder was standing impassively behind the wheel chair.

“Doctor, I do not believe you have met Mr. Fortescue, my father’s attorney.”

Doctor Zinder bowed and smiled stiffly.

“It is a pleasure, Counselor.”

“How do you do?” Fortescue said, as Doctor Zinder moved Harker’s chair slowly to the side of the desk. He cleared his throat and glanced down at the papers on his desk. Then he raised his eyes to Silas. “As you know Silas you father’s will was not made in your favor. The bulk of the estate, he left to Mr. and Mrs. Mason, who, as you know, were his only servants for the last twenty five years of his life. You, I am sure, remember the Masons favorably.” He smiled reassuringly at the white-haired couple at his side.

Harker looked up at the two old people, who stood, hands clasped together, watching the scene with troubled eyes.

“I remember the Masons,” he said. He nodded to them and turned his gaze again to the lawyer. “Please go on.”

“However,” Counselor Fortescue said, “there was a provision in your father’s will stipulating that you would become the beneficiary if you should in any way be disabled or incapacitated.” His gaze wavered from Harker’s and dropped to the one shoe visible against the foot rail of the wheel chair. He coughed and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Since your unfortunate accident you have become, under the terms of the will, your father’s sole beneficiary. However there are a few things remaining to be cleared up.”

“What things?” Harker asked quickly.

“First, I must have a complete report of how the accident occurred, to add to the account we already have. It is a formality, but unfortunately a necessary one. Dr. Zinder, I believe, was the surgeon who performed the operation?”

“Yes,” said Harker.

“That is excellent,” the lawyer said. He leaned back in his chair. “Suppose you tell us, Doctor, the circumstances surrounding the operation. My secretary will take complete notes and we will have this business over with.”

“You have made several references to accident,” Doctor Zinder said quietly. “It was not an accident, but a gangrenous infection that necessitated the operation. Mr. Harker has rooms in the establishment where I reside. A simple scratch on his leg resulted in the infection. When he asked me to examine him it was too late for anything but emergency measures. I performed the operation in my room. I am a licensed surgeon and I have the necessary equipment in my rooms. That is all there is to the matter. It is extremely unfortunate for Mr. Harker that he did not have his cut taken care of immediately, but there is nothing that can be done about that now.”

“I see,” Fortescue said. He tapped a pencil against the sheets of paper on his desk and frowned. “In that case there is no need to take up any more of your time. I will have the necessary papers drawn up. A few signatures will be necessary and then your father’s estate will be in your hands.”

“Thank you,” Harker said.

“There is just one more thing,” Fortescue said. He smiled at the elderly couple beside him. “Mr. and Mrs. Mason served your father long and faithfully and it was obviously his wish that they be taken care of. This change in the will has left them in extremely difficult straits. Now, just as a suggestion, I think it might be a nice gesture if you were to give them something in the way of a pension to take care of their simple wants. A thousand or two a year would do it nicely and — er — you can see it won’t be for many years.” Harker looked thoughtfully at the Masons and then at Morton Fortescue.

“Would they have done it for me?” he inquired mildly.

“Why, my boy,” Fortescue said in surprise, “I thought you knew. They had made arrangements to provide you with a yearly income for life out of the estate. They felt distressed that you had been left out completely, and they felt your father wouldn’t mind too much. I had all the papers drawn, but of course your unfortunate accident has changed everything.”

“So they were going to do that for me,” Harker said softly.

“Certainly,” Fortescue said heartily. “They’re wonderful people. It’s little wonder that your father thought so much of them. Now I’d suggest as a pension—”

“Mr. Fortescue,” Harker said icily, “in the future I can dispense with your advice and suggestions. The Masons were stupid fools if they thought one damn about me. Because they were going to make an addle-headed, sentimental gesture, does it follow that I have to be equally foolish? Certainly not.”

Morton Fortescue dropped his eyes to the desk and a flush stained his heavy face.

“I see,” he said. “I will send over the papers for your signature by messenger. Good day.”

Harker smiled thinly.

“Goodbye, Counselor,” he said lightly.

He was still smiling in comfortable satisfaction as Doctor Zinder turned his chair and wheeled him out of the office.

Chapter III

“Where’s my leg?”

Silas Harker shouted the question at Doctor Zinder He was seated in his wheel chair in a sumptuously furnished hotel suite and the doctor was regarding him blandly from the comfortable depths of an over-stuffed chair.

Harker’s hands were hooked like claws about the arms of his chair and his face was flushed with rage.

“You heard me!” he bellowed. “Don’t sit there and grin at me, damn you! Where is the leg you promised me? It’s been five months now since my operation. You’ve got all the money you need, haven’t you?”

“Yes, now that you mention it, I have plenty of money,” the doctor said calmly. He blew a lazy wreath of smoke toward the ceiling. “These things cannot be rushed, my boy. Securing just the exact type of leg I need for the operation is taking a little longer than I thought. You see it must be the leg of a man close to your own age and size. I have a prospect lined up for tonight and maybe luck will be with me this time.”

“You still haven’t told me how you’re going to get the leg,” Harker said. “Are you going to buy it? Who’d be foolish enough to sell a leg?”

“You were,” Doctor Zinder chuckled. “Shut up!” shouted Harker. “I did it only because I trusted you. I don’t want any more of your damn attempts at comedy, Zinder.”

He pulled the blanket closer about his lap and wheeled his chair sulkily away from the doctor. His gaze moved disconsolately over the rich furnishings of the room. They suddenly seemed a heavy, outrageous price to pay for his miserable helplessness.

Doctor Zinder stood and walked to the door.

“Au revoir, my impetuous friend.” He glanced at his watch. “I meet our new prospect in less than an hour. Perhaps when I return I shall have good news to report.”

When the doctor had gone Harker wheeled his chair to the wide double windows that commanded a view of the tossing gray lake and his eyes grew cold as he watched the white sails far out on the water and the swooping gulls playing tag with foamy-crested breakers that dashed against the shore.

Everything he gazed on seemed joyous and carefree and unfettered. His eyes dropped to his lap and a choking anger swept over him.

If Zinder had been lying to him... The thought was too much. Zinder couldn’t have fabricated all the records and photographs of experiments over the last two decades.

It was then, as he sat before the window watching the gray lake, that he decided Zinder must die. He wondered why the thought had never occurred to him before. Whether Zinder had lied to him or not, whether he accomplished the grafting of the new leg or not, was immaterial. The man knew too much and for that reason he would always be dangerous.

The thought of Zinder’s death gave him a measure of comfort. Harker was slightly surprised at the extent of his own callousness in this respect. He turned over in his mind a half dozen methods he could use to eliminate the doctor and he was pleased to discover that the process was a pleasant and stimulating pastime.

Once the decision to kill Zinder was made, he felt strangely relieved. He realized then that in all probability he had been subconsciously planning the man’s murder for months. It was all so logical and simple that it startled him. Zinder was the only man who could ever cause him trouble. No one in the world suspected that the amputation of his leg had been deliberate, and no one could possibly dream that he was planning to have a flesh and blood leg grafted onto his stump. Zinder, however, knew those things, and he was probably intending to blackmail him for the rest of his life when the operation was completed.

Harker chuckled out loud and the first smile in months touched his lips. What an unpleasant surprise was in store for the little German doctor!

For the rest of the afternoon he concentrated on ways and means. A gun would be simple and definite but the noise would create attention. The opportunities for poison were somewhat limited. That left the alternative of cold steel.

A knife would be perfect, Harker decided. He could easily conceal it in the folds of his blanket and when Zinder turned his back — that would be that.

There would then be the problem of disposing of the body, but he could figure out something without too much difficulty.

When Zinder returned to the hotel apartment it was dark. He closed the door hurriedly behind him and strode across the room to Harker. His face was flushed and his hands trembled as he lit a cigarette.

“Well, what luck?” Harker asked anxiously.

“I have the leg,” Zinder said. His eyes were flicking nervously about the room as he spoke.

Harker felt a thrill of excitement. He leaned forward in his chair, eyes blazing.

“You’ve got it?” he cried.

“Yes,” said Zinder.

“Wonderful! How soon can we start the operation?”

“Immediately. I’ve already sent for the car to take you to the laboratory. There is not a second’s time to lose. I must perform the operation before rigor mortis sets into the leg.”

“Rigor mortis!” Harker cried. “Then the leg has just been freshly amputated. Zinder, where is this leg? Where did you get it?”

“I’ve sent the leg on to the laboratory,” Zinder said. “Now stop bothering me with questions. You’ve got to get ready.”

“Zinder!” Harker cried desperately, “where did you get that leg? Whose was it? Where is that person now? I must know. You can’t possibly understand how I feel.”

“You’re behaving like a child,” Zinder snapped. “What difference does it make where I got the leg? It will be yours within twenty-four hours, you fool.”

“That’s why I must know,” Harker said.

“I will tell you this much,” Zinder said. “The former owner of the leg has no use for it now.”

Harker relaxed slowly in his chair.

“I feel better,” he said. “You got the leg then from the morgue, didn’t you?”

Doctor Zinder paused in the act of lighting a cigarette and studied Harker deliberately.

“You are being rather naive, my friend,” he murmured. “I had to take drastic measures to secure this particular leg. To be blunt, I had to murder the man.”

“Murder?” gasped Harker. “But—”

“Don’t act so shocked,” Doctor Zinder said coldly. “You don’t imagine I wanted to kill the fool, do you? It was the only thing I could do. I met him at a lonely spot far from the city. Everything was perfect except that his fondness for his leg was greater than the inducement of your cash. So I had to put him out of the way. Now stop babbling. The thing has been done. And if we’re going to perform a successful operation we must hurry.”

“But it seems so horrible,” Harker said in a stunned voice. He couldn’t account for the feeling of revulsion that gripped him. Not an hour before he had been pleasantly plotting Zinder’s death without the tiniest qualm of conscience. But this, somehow, seemed different. He passed a shaking hand over his forehead.

“All right,” he said, “I will get ready.”

His voice was heavy and dull and his arms seemed tired and old as he wheeled his chair toward the bedroom.

Chapter IV

Twenty-four hours later Silas Harker lay on an operation table in Doctor Zinder’s laboratory. A white sheet was draped over his body. His breathing was heavy and labored. Occasionally he twisted on the table and a feeble moan passed his lips.

Doctor Zinder worked swiftly and silently over him. For an hour there was no sound in the small room but the dry scraping sound of the scalpel and Harker’s rhythmic breathing. Finally Doctor Zinder laid aside his instruments and slipped his arms from the surgical dressing gown he was wearing.

An almost fanatical light of triumph was in his eyes as he studied the results of his work. He checked Harker’s pulse and then snapped out the gleaming battery of overhead lights.

When Harker awoke he stared without comprehension at the ceiling of the room. He felt sick and weak. Finally he realized that he was back at the hotel, in his own bedroom. Consciousness left him then, but he came to again in a few hours. He was able to raise his head from the pillow and glance down at his form, outlined under the thin bed covering. A quick exultation swept over him as he saw the outlines of two legs stretching toward the foot of the bed.

Zinder had done it!

That was his first deliriously happy thought. His new leg was bandaged tightly from hip to ankle and there was no sensation or feeling to it at all. It might have been a heavy bar of lead attached to his body — but Harker knew it wasn’t.

The bedroom door opened and Doctor Zinder appeared.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Fine,” Harker said, “fine. H — how did things go?”

“Excellent. I have every reason to believe that the operation was a complete success. Within a few weeks you should be up and walking. Do you feel anything in your recently acquired member?”

“Nothing,” Harker said.

“That is to be expected.”

“I haven’t tried to move it,” Harker said. “Would it hurt to try?”

“No, but you will not be able to move the muscles until the cast is removed. That will not be for a few days. Until then, just rest.”

A week later Zinder removed the cast from the new leg and Harker was able to sit up for the first time since the operation.

“You will not be able to walk for some time,” Zinder said. “It will take you a while to become accustomed to the leg. Have you tried to move the muscles yet?”

“No,” Harker said, “I–I’ve been afraid.”

“Nonsense, there is nothing to fear. The muscles and nerves should have mended by this time. It will not hurt to use them a little each day. In fact you must exercise this new leg to strengthen it. Try now.”

Harker leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His new leg was stretched straight before him on a cushioned stool. Except for the ugly red incisions above the knee it was as perfect as his own leg. In fact, it was a good deal larger and more muscular than the leg with which Nature had endowed him.

“Try!” Doctor Zinder said. His voice cracked with authority. “You must!”

“I’m trying,” Harker gasped.

Sweat stood out on his brow and ran in tiny rivulets down his cheeks. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles whitened. Slowly, painfully, he flexed the new leg until the knee was lifted slightly from the stool.

“There!” Doctor Zinder cried triumphantly. “You have done it.”

Harker relaxed, breathing heavily. The leg sank back to its cushioned support.

“I did it,” Harker said tremulously. “You saw it, Doctor. I really moved it, didn’t I?”

“Of course,” Doctor Zinder said. “And you must continue to use it until it is as strong as your other leg.”

For two weeks Harker exercised his new leg religiously, until he felt that it was as strong and dependable as his own leg. He had not yet tried to walk on his new leg but that day, he knew, was not far away.

And when that day arrived he would have no further use for the good Doctor Zinder. The thought of the doctor’s death was a tonic to him during his days of convalescence.

Finally the day came when he walked. At first he took a few cautious steps about the room, then, growing bolder, he advanced cautiously into the living room and from there to the kitchen and eventually back to his bedroom.

He sank into his chair, breathing hard, but tremendously excited and happy. He had walked! That was all he had been waiting for. When his strength returned he walked to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers until he found what he wanted — a slim, razor-sharp carving knife.

When Doctor Zinder returned he was sitting in his wheel chair, swaddled in blankets.

“Well,” the doctor said, striding toward him, “how did it go today?”

“Not so well,” Harker said weakly. “Something gave way while I was taking my exercises. The knee has been hurting like the devil ever since.”

“Hmmm,” the doctor said, “we’ll have to see about that.”

He bent down beside Harker’s chair and turned back the blanket.

“It looks all right,” he said quietly, “but I’ll make a complete examination.”

Harker smiled.

“I think that would be best,” he said.

His hand closed tenderly over the hilt of the knife.

“By the way, Doctor,” he said, “do you remember how you got this leg for me? You killed a man for it, didn’t you?”

“That is a subject which is closed,” Doctor Zinder said shortly.

“I’ve often wondered how you did it,” Harker said musingly. His eyes were measuring the exact spot on the doctor’s thin neck where he would plunge the knife. He derived an ironic satisfaction from talking about the man the doctor had murdered, while preparing to end the doctor’s own life. It was the perfect touch. His smile widened.

“Did you use a knife?” he asked.

“No. I stunned the man with a blow from behind.”

“Then,” Harker said softly, “you borrowed his leg.”

“Yes.”

“But the body?”

“It was a deserted section of the city. No remains will ever be found.” The doctor went on talking but Harker was not listening. He was not interested in what the doctor had done with the body. The time had come to strike.

“Does it still hurt?” Doctor Zinder asked.

“Very much,” Harker said.

Frowning, the doctor bent over the leg and his back was to Harker. Unhurriedly Harker drew the knife from the folds of the blanket and plunged it through the back of the doctor’s neck.

It was all over very quickly. The doctor lurched forward, a strangling, gurgling cry bursting from his throat. As he struck the floor he rolled over and for an instant Harker stared into the dying man’s hate-filled, impotently blazing eyes — and then the spark in those eyes went out forever.

There was quite a lot of blood and it took Harker several hours to clean up the mess. But when he finished he congratulated himself. The doctor’s body was in an asbestos lined trunk which was securely locked and bolted. The express company would pick the trunk up that afternoon and cart it to a river warehouse. Harker had made these arrangements in advance. The bloodstains had been removed from the carpeting and floor, the butcher knife was back in the kitchen drawer where it belonged.

Everything was perfect. It took him only a few moments to pack his bags and then he left the hotel. He did not intend to return. He was leaving the city that night. As he rode down in the elevator he felt magnificent. True he was a little weak from his exertions, but his new leg was strong and buoyant beneath him and he felt fine.

And Zinder was out of the way forever. That was another reason for his ebullient feelings. He was safe now from exposure. His life was his own, to live as he deemed.

Whistling, he strode through the lobby of the hotel and into the bright sunlight of Michigan Boulevard. He hailed a cab and directed the driver to take him to a downtown hotel. As long as he had the entire afternoon to kill he decided to get a little rest. With a contented sigh he leaned back and lighted a cigarette. His eye chanced to fall on an army recruiting poster as he was driven along and he smiled cynically.

“Suckers,” he thought.

Chapter V

He was tired when he got to his hotel room. His breath was short and he was perspiring freely. The new leg was the only part of his body that seemed fresh and strong. The muscles of his own leg were trembling with weariness. He sank gratefully onto the soft bed and stretched out, closing his eyes.

For several minutes he lay there, resting comfortably and musing on the delights of the existence that he would be soon enjoying. And then he noticed that his new leg was twitching strangely. He sat up, perplexed, and as he did, the leg swung off the bed and pulled him up to a standing position.

He stood beside the bed frowning bewilderedly. One instant he had been comfortably lying down, with no immediate intention of getting up; but now, here he was, on his feet. Perhaps he had imagined the entire thing. Maybe he only imagined that the leg, for an instant, had acted independently of his will.

The thought that it might not have been just imagination; had, in fact, actually happened, brought a chill sweat to his forehead.

For several seconds he pondered the happening uneasily, and he had just decided that it was an accidental reflex when the leg moved again, in a long step toward the door. Harker’s own leg moved automatically to keep him from his losing his balance and the other leg continued walking. Powerless to stop, Harker found himself striding across the room to the door.

He would have have crashed into the solid wood of the door if he hadn’t, at the last instant, jerked it open. He was in the hallway then, striding helplessly toward the emergency stairway that led to the street.

He was so confused and bewildered that he was unable to think coherently. The leg started determinedly down the steps and Harker could do nothing but follow. When he reached the street the leg turned sharply and headed for the downtown district with long swinging strides.

Harker fought down the panic mounting in his breast. Obviously there was some rational explanation for the leg’s conduct. Maybe the nerves and muscles of the leg were not as yet coordinated to his thinking processes and were acting with independent, automatic reflexes, like the twitching halves of a severed snake.

There was little comfort in this rationalization. The long strides of the leg forced his own leg to unaccustomed exertion to keep him from falling to the ground with each step. His breath was coming hard and he was perspiring freely after six or seven blocks, but stilt the leg gave no indication of slowing or stopping. When they reached the downtown area the leg apparently lost its determined purposefulness for it led Harker on an aimless, wandering tour of the Loop that lasted until darkness had come and lights were winking on from windows of the office buildings.

Harker was becoming dizzy with fatigue. His body ached and his mouth was parched and dry. Each breath was an effort that became increasingly hard to make. Hunger and thirst were gnawing at him but he was powerless to stop, even for a quick swallow of water. The leg was tireless. It marched along block after block, crossing streets, turning down alleys, retracing its pathway aimlessly and endlessly.

Finally, as the evening was wearing on toward midnight, the leg left the Loop and headed southward. Now there seemed to be a new purpose and direction in its movements and its strides grew longer, more determined.

Harker’s breath sounded like the rasping of dry paper; his body trembled with weariness, but he stumbled on helplessly. He tried to throw himself to the ground to gain a moment’s respite but the leg held him to its course with frightening strength.

Hysteria was plucking at him now, torturing his thoughts with a thousand mad possibilities. He didn’t dare ask himself the questions that hammered at his brain.

The Loop was now far behind. Harker’s hysterically gleaming eyes saw that he was passing through the city’s industrial district. The streets were deserted and the occasional lights cast a ghostly illumination against the crude, squat factory buildings.

The leg’s determined strides slackened noticeably as it turned and started up a dark side street. Halfway down the darkened street it stopped.

A sobbing cry of relief broke from Harker’s parched lips. This hellish business had finally come to an end. He leaned against the wall of a building until his giddy weakness passed and some of his strength returned.

But when he tried to move he found it impossible. The leg was firmly attached to the ground as if it had been rooted there. Harker made a dozen attempts to walk away but they were hopelessly futile. Sobbing, he sank back against the wall of the building. His wild staring eyes tried to pierce the gloomy darkness of the side street. There was no one in sight. The street was deserted.

Fear swept over him in shuddering shocks. What would happen to him? Was he doomed to remain rooted here until he died of thirst? He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. What madness had prompted him to enter into this terrible, inhuman situation? He cursed Doctor Zinder until he was weak and spent.

Suddenly he heard a footstep on the sidewalk. He jerked his head up and saw a bulky dark form moving slowly toward him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and a shuddering hysteria swept over him.

The approaching figure stopped. “All right, buddy,” a voice from the darkness said. “What’s the idea? This ain’t a public park. Get moving?” Harker almost fainted with relief as he recognized the tone of authority and saw, as the man stepped closer, the uniform and badge he was wearing.

A light flashed in the darkness and a stab of illumination leaped into Harker’s face. He blinked in the glare.

“What’s the matter with you?” the officer demanded. “I ought to run you in for loitering here. This is a defense area, you know.”

Fear was again hammering at Harker. In the terror of his immediate predicament he had forgotten that he had the blood of Doctor Zinder on his hands. And the man holding the light in his face was an officer of the law, the law which Harker had brazenly flouted. He couldn’t afford to be arrested now.

“I–I just stopped to rest a minute,” he said weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, get movin’ then.”

Sweat poured out of Harker’s pores as he tried frantically to walk away from the spot. But the leg was as firmly attached to the sidewalk as a stone post.

“What’s the matter with you?” the officer demanded suspiciously. “I told you to get movin’ didn’t I? What are you waiting for? A little help from my club?”

“N — no,” gasped Harker, “it’s just—”

Suddenly the leg came to life again. With a single stride it turned Harker around and started back toward the cross-street. Now it moved more rapidly, more determinedly than ever.

And Harker realized then that the leg had been looking for something. And now it seemed to have found the trail for which it had been seeking; for its strides were sure and steady.

His heart trembled with this realization. A sobbing cry choked in his throat and his eyes were wild and mad with horror.

What was the leg searching for?

He didn’t dare answer this question; his mind recoiled from it in sharp terror.

The leg strode with inevitable sureness and strength through the darkened factory district and headed west toward the deserted waste areas of Chicago’s sprawling southwest side. Saliva drooled from Harker’s slack lips. His face was stiff with blind, unreasoning fear.

For an hour the leg carried him straight west until it reached a vast deserted lot, used by the city as a refuse heap. There it swung sharply and entered the lot, striding heedlessly, blindly, over the heaps of rusted cans, bottles and filth dumped in squat ugly piles over the face of the lot.

Ahead in the darkness Harker could see the bulky outlines of a crumbling wall, sagging with the weight of its years. The leg was carrying him toward the lowest section of the wall, which was hardly two feet high. Harker sank to his ankles in the slime and ooze of the refuse and he staggered blindly with weariness.

Babbling, hysterical words poured from his lips and the sound of the sobbing voice was a weird cacophony that roared inside his head like maniacal thunder.

Something was plucking at his mind. A blind, frantic thought was hammering through the maze of panic that clouded his brain. It was something that had been said to him, but he couldn’t remember what it was or who had said it.

His wild eyes swung over the deserted lot with its piles of dirt and refuse and then to the broken, crumbling wall that loomed closer with each of the leg’s powerful, determined strides.

The wall enclosed a pit. And in that pit something gleamed whitely.

A sobbing scream tore from Harker’s throat.

He knew of this place. Doctor Zinder had told him of this place. And that was the thought that had been flickering on the border of his consciousness.

Doctor Zinder had told of this place!

This was the spot where Doctor Zinder had committed murder and stolen a leg. The leg which was now drawing him irresistibly toward the gleaming whiteness at the bottom of the pit.

Doctor Zinder had told him this, but he had been preparing to kill him at the time and the words had hardly registered.

Doctor Zinder had said: “No remains will ever be found!”

Harker screamed madly as the leg stepped up to the crumbling wall. With every atom of his strength he fought against the leg, but his frantic efforts were unavailing.

Doctor Zinder’s words pounded like a gong in his head.

“No remains will ever be found!” The stench of fumes from the lime pit were in Harker’s nostrils as the leg broke into a stumbling run that covered the last few feet in a faltering rush. Harker screamed, and the sound was a horrible choking noise in his throat. He screamed again as the leg took the last final step and that scream was broken off in a ragged gurgling shriek as his plummeting body struck the cloying waves of corrosive lime...

And in that last horrible instant Harker knew what the leg had been searching for.

The Ghost that Haunted Hitler

First published in Fantastic Adventures, December 1942.

Although this story is presented purely as fiction, author William P. McGivern displayed a strangely fervent eagerness that it be presented to the public at the earliest possible moment. “This story must be published!” he said forcefully. We, as editors, smiled, read the story, agreed that it was a good story. And we publish it here. But the other day we were introduced to a man who spoke with an accent. Later we discovered that this man had “sought out” McGivern. Now we wonder...

Chapter I

A guttering candle flamed in the dank darkness of the cellar casting grotesque shadows against the limestone walls.

Three men sat at a table in that cellar.

The man at the head of the table leaned forward and for an instant his face was strikingly lighted by the flickering candle.

His face was lean and pale. The jaw-line was sharp and hard. A thin nose jutted over a slight blonde mustache. The eyes of the man were only mirrored pools of blackness.

He glanced down at the map lying before him on the table.

“Every detail has been arranged,” he said. His voice was softly cautious. “He will be here, in Prague, tomorrow.”

The man on his left leaned forward tensely. The candle-light caught the blazing glints in his black eyes, the almost savage determination in his grimly clamped jaw. His thick fingers gripped the edge of the table.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. “Can we trust our information?”

The man opposite the speaker, a heavy-shouldered, dark-browed giant, nodded thoughtfully.

“Can we be sure?” he growled. “We will have only one chance.” His eyes turned to the man at the head of the table. “One slip now will ruin everything.”

The man at the head of the table glanced briefly at the two men and a faint, ironic smile brushed his thin lips.

“Yes, we can trust this information.”

He bent over the map deliberately. The candle light penetrated the shadowy caverns of his eyes as he leaned forward, transforming them into yellow pools of strange luminance. There was something haunting about those green-yellow eyes, something about their weird glow in the darkness that was chilling. They were the eyes of a creature of darkness, the eyes of a hunter.

“We can trust this information,” he said. “Underground Intelligence from Berlin transmitted it to me. Heydrich will be in Prague tomorrow.”

The dark-browed giant stood up suddenly, mighty fists clenching.

“The Hangman!” he grated. “His men took my wife, my child—”

The man at the head of the table took his arm and drew him back to his seat.

“I know,” he said softly. “But the Hangman’s hour of reckoning draws closer with each tick of the clock. Now you have both studied this map of the city, and the route Heydrich’s car will take. Are you sure of what you must do?”

The two men nodded silently. “Excellent. I will be on hand. When your — ah — errand is completed I will give you your instructions for leaving the city. I think that is all, gentlemen. Good luck.”

The man on his left drummed his fingers nervously on the top of the table. His smouldering black eyes were worried.

“You say you will be there?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t. The neighborhood will be alive with Gestapo police seconds after we have done our work! It will direct suspicion at you if you are discovered in the vicinity.”

“I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”

“But you are one of our few links with the Reich authorities. You are worth a hundred of us. As long as they believe you a renegade American and admit you to their councils, you are invaluable to the underground movement. Nothing must happen to you.”

“I don’t intend letting anything happen to me,” the man at the head of the table said. A whimsical smile touched his face but his yellow-green eyes did not reflect that smile. “Even so, I’d risk quite a bit to be present at Herr Heydrich’s final performance. When he departs for his eternal and — ah — warm reward I want to be there to raise a silent cheer.”

He stood up slowly, a tall thin figure with the esthetic features of a scholar and the yellow-green eyes of a jungle hunter.

“I’m afraid we must consider the matter settled,” he said gently. “Au revoir, until tomorrow, my comrades.”

With a slight smile he turned and moved silently toward the cellar exit.

After a moment one of the men at the table pinched out the candle and darkness, close and final, settled pall-like over the damp cellar...

At five o’clock on the afternoon of May twenty-eighth, a German staff car entered the outskirts of Prague and followed one of the main boulevards leading to the center of the city.

The car was driven by an impassive German officer and the sole occupant of the tonneau was a thin, loose-lipped man with pale, fretful features and cold shifting eyes. He wore the insignia of a Reich Upper Group Leader and his narrow chest was covered with medals and decorations.

As the car approached an intersection a stocky black-haired man on a bicycle swung out into the boulevard and pedaled leisurely along the street, directly in front of the staff car.

The chauffeur applied the brakes, slowing the car. He sounded the horn impatiently, swearing under his breath.

The man in the rear of the car looked up, his cold eyes snapping. A muscle twitched nervously in his cheek.

“What is the matter?” he barked.

The chauffeur gestured helplessly at the slowly moving bicyclist.

“I am sorry, sir, but this fool ahead on the cycle is blocking the street. Perhaps he is deaf.” He sounded the horn again, pressing angrily with the flat of his hand.

The officer in the rear of the car leaned back against the cushioned seat. A smile played about his loose lips and his unnaturally pale face lighted with a strange eagerness.

“How unfortunate for him,” he murmured. “Run him down.”

“But, excellency—”

“Silence!” The single word cracked like a leash about the chauffeur’s ears. “You have your orders!”

Red-faced, the chauffeur jammed his foot on the accelerator, but as the heavy car started to gain momentum, the bicyclist suddenly swerved to one side, leaving the road clear for the staff car.

The officer in the rear of the car cursed softly and his flabby lips twisted in a pout.

“The stupid fellow has saved his life,” he muttered. He crossed his booted leg nervously. “And for what? I would have been doing him a favor by crushing him beneath the wheels of the car. What can life possibly mean to such a senseless, inferior clod? Only a succession of hungry days and miserable nights stretching on forever. He is helpless to help himself or to hurt others. He lives without power, without effect, without importance. Better not to live.”

As the car drew abreast of the man on the bicycle he glanced idly at the rider. Boiling black eyes met his for one chilling instant. Eyes set in a hard, tensely determined face, eyes without fear, eyes that gleamed like flashing sword points.

The officer saw the man on the bicycle reach into the folds of his coarse jacket and draw out a round, black object; and he suddenly screamed madly at his chauffeur.

A man on the opposite side of the street, a dark-browed giant of a man, stepped suddenly from between two buildings. He drew a gun from his pocket and sighted deliberately at the figure in the tonneau of the staff car. His gun barked five times.

Almost at the same instant the arm of the cyclist flashed up and down, and a small black ball smashed against the hood of the car.

A reverberating explosion shattered the air.

The car rocked from the force of the blast. The chauffeur fell forward over the wheel and the machine careened madly over the sidewalk and smashed its hood into the glass showcase of a small shop.

The man on the bicycle pedaled swiftly across the street to the man who had fired the shots into the car.

“Did you get him?” he snapped.

“I think so. Come, we must hurry.”

“Not yet.” The man who had thrown the bomb shot an anxious glance up and down the street. “He said he would be here to give us directions.”

“Maybe he has failed. Something might have happened to him.”

“He will not fail us.”

Already people were appearing on the quiet street, emerging from the neat homes and small shops that lined the boulevard. Two men were running toward the wreckage of the car.

A cart with a load of hay turned onto the boulevard from a side street and the driver stopped the horses near the wrecked car. The driver clambered down without haste. He was wearing frayed overalls and a straw hat and his thin features were set in dull, stoic lines.

The man with the bicycle gripped his huge companion’s arm as the tall figure of the driver strode toward them.

“He has not failed us!” he whispered tensely.

“What do you mean?”

The overalled figure stopped in front of them.

“Please accept my congratulations,” he said. “You have done an excellent afternoon’s work. As a reward I would suggest a quiet drive through the country. And — ah — I wouldn’t let anything stop you from taking your reward immediately.”

The speaker lifted his straw hat slowly and the last rays of the sun struck lights in his strange, yellow-green eyes. The faces of the two men gleamed. “We knew you’d come,” the dark-featured giant said huskily. “Where shall we go?”

The man in overalls glanced lazily across the street at the wreckage of the car, noting the gathering of men and women and listening to the growing tumult spreading along the boulevard.

“If I were you,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d drive slowly away from this turbulent place and find some quiet secluded village and remain there. You’ll find the peace and quiet good for your souls. For that purpose I can’t think of a better place than the lazy, pleasant village of Lidice.”

“Lidice?”

“Yes, they’re expecting you. Now get started. At any moment the genial gentlemen from the Gestapo will arrive and in their charming fashion begin the questioning of witnesses.”

“But you?”

The yellow-green eyes glinted with amusement.

“When the Gestapo police arrive I shall be the only one present with an accurate description of the assassins, who, I shall swear, were eight in number and possessed of hairy, ringed tails. Now, go quickly. God be with you.”

Chapter II

On the morning of June fifth, there was an undercurrent of suppressed excitement and tension in the offices of the Reich’s Minister of Occupation, Marshal Wilhelm von Bock.

The tension was not localized however, in the imposing white-façaded building that Marshal von Bock had appropriated from the Czech government, but it was evident in all parts of Prague, reflected in the submissive eyes of women and the sullen, bitter eyes of men.

The death of Reinhardt Heydrich, the protector of Czechoslovakia, had been announced the day before, and already three hundred and fifty innocent men and women of Prague had been executed in wholesale retaliation.

In the imposing inner sanctum of Reich’s Minister von Bock, far from the bloody street scenes, far from the tragic-eyed men and women of Prague, this matter of reprisal was being discussed coldly, deliberately.

Marshal von Bock was pacing slowly in front of his magnificent mahogany desk. On the wall behind the desk an immense swastika flag hung from the ceiling to the floor. The marshal was a short, gross man with a distended stomach and heavy, oily jowls. In his elaborately emblazoned uniform he looked ridiculously like a strutting pigeon; but there was nothing ridiculous about the marshal’s pale, ruthless eyes and thick, cruel lips.

“This affair,” he was saying in his soft, slightly lisping voice, “presents an interesting psychological problem, do you not agree Herr Faber?”

He paused, hands clasped behind his back, and peered down at the figure sprawled comfortably in one of the room’s thickly padded leather chairs.

Michael Faber glanced up at the marshal and smiled faintly. His lean face was tranquilly relaxed and his yellow-green eyes were sleepily veiled.

“But, of course, Herr Minister,” he drawled. “If you continue the execution of innocent citizens we shall soon know exactly how far a people may be goaded. That should be valuable clinical information if any of us are here to appreciate it.”

Marshal von Bock folded his pudgy arms and shook his head despairingly.

“My good Herr Faber,” he said woefully, “you still have your curious American respect for the common people, do you not? After the things you have seen in Nazi countries you should realize that the people are but a helpless, unimportant mass of atoms. Those who guide and direct that mass of atoms are the only important human beings. You worry about the people of Prague, of Czechoslovakia revolting? Bah! That is ridiculous. We can grind them to powder under our heels and they will only whine for pity.”

Michael Faber lit his pipe and stared thoughtfully at the glowing match as smoke swirled around his head. His hunter’s eyes caught the reflection of the match and gleamed warmly under lowered lids.

“What you say, marshal,” he said, “is undoubtedly true. But what happened to Heydrich can happen, one day, to any of us.”

A flicker of amusement touched his face as Marshal von Bock suddenly mopped his damp brow.

“Bah!” the Minister said sharply. “That was an accident.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder and resumed his slow pacing.

“That was only an accident,” he repeated. “When we have completed our reprisals against these swine they will know better than to try a thing like that again.”

“Will the reprisals consist simply of murdering more Czechs?” Michael Faber asked.

Marshal von Bock stopped pacing and regarded Faber thoughtfully.

“The word, Herr Faber, is not ‘murder’,” he said softly.

“A slip of the tongue,” Michael said lazily.

“Your tongue seems to be in the habit of slipping, Herr Faber,” von Bock said. He folded his arms carefully. “You have been helpful to us in numerous ways, but please remember that we could, if necessary, do without you, Herr Faber. In Nazi Germany no one man is important!”

Michael raised his right arm languidly.

“Heil Hitler!” he murmured.

Minister von Bock flushed and glanced nervously about.

“I did not of course mean to include our Fuehrer in my statement,” he said weakly. “I meant that only the Fuehrer is important in Nazi Germany. It was a slip of the tongue.”

Michael’s eyes glinted with amusement.

“Bad habit,” he observed.

Marshal von Bock glared sharply at him, and then he resumed his pacing, mopping his perspiring brow as he padded back and forth in front of his desk.

“Let us forget this conversation,” he said. “We were discussing reprisals. What our future policy will be I do not know. That is a matter for the Reich State to decide. I am expecting word from them any day now as to how to proceed. When a man as important as Heydrich is assassinated, the means of reprisal is for the Fuehrer to decide. Do you realize that this assassination has given encouragement to all enemies of the Reich in Europe? If drastic and effective reprisals are not instantly undertaken a wave of this type of revolt might sweep the continent. And our enemies abroad are mocking us. We must show them, too, what happens to all enemies of the Reich, whether in Europe or across the seas.”

As the marshal finished speaking the heavy double doors of the office opened and an under-officer entered and saluted.

“Someone to see you, Herr Minister,” he said.

“Who is it?” Marshal von Bock said. “If he does not have an appointment send him away.”

“It is a woman, Herr Minister. She asked me to give you this.” The underofficer handed the minister a card.

Marshal von Bock glanced at the card and his eyes narrowed.

“Send her in immediately,” he said. When the under-officer left he turned to Michael and his fat oily face was agleam with excitement. “She is from Berlin, from the office of Heinrich Himmler.”

The door opened again and a tall, red-haired girl entered the room. Her features were as cold and white as marble, and her cool gray eyes were without expression. She was beautiful, Michael noticed, with an imperious, regal beauty that was without warmth or appeal.

She walked slowly toward von Bock and her slender legs and body moved in a flowing poem of motion.

The minister drew in his paunch and snapped to attention. His right arm shot out.

“Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler!” the girl answered.

“Heil Hitler,” murmured Michael, around the stem of his pipe.

The girl glanced down, seeing him for the first time. Her cool gray eyes studied him carefully, deliberately, then she turned her gaze back to von Bock.

“You are Reich’s Minister von Bock?” she asked. Her voice was clear and firm, with just the faintest trace of an accent.

“That is right,” von Bock answered. “Won’t you be seated?”

“I prefer to stand. I am Marie Kahn, from the office of Reich’s Deputy, Heinrich Himmler. I have an important communication for you in relation to the assassination of Upper Group Leader Heydrich. Who is this man?” She gestured sharply toward Michael, without looking at him.

“He is the American, Michael Faber. He has done much to help us in the past two years. You may speak before him.” The girl glanced down at Michael and studied him coolly. A faint sneer touched her thin, finely molded lips.

“The American renegade, eh?” She turned back to von Bock. “How can you be sure of a man who is a traitor to his country?”

Michael Faber looked up at the girl and his thin, scholarly face was cynically amused. But as he studied her there was no amusement in swirling depths of his hunter’s eyes.

“You are an Austrian, are you not?” he asked. His keen ear had placed her faint accent.

A spot of color appeared in the girl’s marble-white cheeks.

“What concern is that of yours?” Michael spread his hands in a careless gesture.

“None at all,” he smiled lazily. “But how, my dear Fratdein, can the Nazis be sure of your fealty, since you are admittedly an Austrian.”

The girl turned furiously to von Bock. Every line of her slim body was rigid with anger.

“This I will not stand. He has questioned my loyalty to the Reich, to our Fuehrer. I will make a report of this incident, Herr Minister.”

“Now, now,” von Bock said soothingly, “we must not lose our tempers and fight among ourselves. The loyalty of both of you is unquestioned.” He rubbed his pudgy hands together. “You have orders for me, Fraulein Kahn, and here we stand, wasting time in bickering.”

The girl squared her slim shoulders.

Her gray eyes were alive against the whiteness of her face.

“Yes, Herr Minister,” she said. Her voice was even and cold. “You are right. My message to you is this: In reprisal for the cowardly assassination of our beloved Reinhardt Heydrich, the village of Lidice will be reduced to dust. The men will be immediately executed, the women sent to concentration camps and the children will become wards of the Third Reich. That is all. The details and arrangements are completely in your hands, Herr Minister.”

Michael Faber lit his pipe thoughtfully and his lean fingers were as steady as rocks.

“Why Lidice?” he asked, squinting upwards through the smoke at the girl. “It’s such a pleasant little town, I’ve always rather liked it.”

“Our Intelligence has discovered that the assassins took refuge there,” the girl answered coldly. “They may still be hiding in the village.”

“They might at that,” Michael said thoughtfully.

“This is delightful,” von Bock said musingly. “This is a fitting reprisal. We will erase the name of Lidice from the rolls of history and from the memory of man. Our dive bombers will leave nothing but a black scar in the earth as a reminder to our enemies of the fate of those who would stand against us. You may take back my message, Fraulein. I will carry out the orders of my Fuehrer to the last detail. Lidice shall avenge the death of Heydrich.”

“Heil Hitler!” Marie Kahn said.

“Heil Hitler!” barked von Bock.

Michael Faber tapped his pipe thoughtfully against his teeth. There was no expression on his lean face but there was a chilling light in the depths of his smouldering, yellow-green eyes.

“Heil Lidice!” he murmured softly under his breath.

Chapter III

On June tenth a strong motorized column roared along the concrete strip of road leading to the village of Lidice. In the lorries were scores of expectantly grinning Nazi storm troopers. Several light tanks brought up the rear of the procession. Above, a V-shaped flight of planes circled lazily against the blue of the late afternoon sky.

At the head of the swiftly moving column in the tonneau of an armored car rode Marshal von Bock and Michael Faber.

“You will see today a practical example of Nazi reprisals,” von Bock said to Michael. “You will see what we can do when our anger is aroused.” The marshal’s hands were clasped comfortably over his protruding stomach and he surveyed the passing countryside with placid, contented eyes. “I think it would be a good idea, Herr Faber, if you would broadcast to the people of America what you will see today. Yes, I think that would be a very good idea.” He turned to the young party Leader seated to his right. “Do you not think that would be a good idea, Captain Mueller?”

Captain Mueller was a heavily built young man with stone-hard features and cropped blond hair. He sat forward on the edge of the seat, his strong brown fingers gripped tightly together.

“Why tell them about it?” he said harshly. His voice was thickly guttural. “They will have first hand experience with our methods very soon.”

“You disagree with me then?” von Bock said mildly.

“And what is your opinion, Herr Faber? After all you are the propaganda expert.”

Michael glanced sideways at the tensely set face of the young captain. There was an amused glint in his eyes.

“I’m afraid I must disagree with our young Captain,” he said. “A thing like the annihilation of Lidice will make a deep impression on our enemies. They will never, never forget it, you may count on that.”

“That is good,” Captain Mueller said.

“That is wonderful,” Michael said quietly.

The motorized column reached the quiet village of Lidice within the half hour. Marshal von Bock’s car rolled through the single main street scattering chickens and occasional live-stock. The remainder of the column stopped at intervals along the dusty road and grim-jawed, heavily armed storm troopers spilled out eagerly.

A child ran screaming into a small cottage and the door was hastily slammed. Frightened, despairing faces were visible occasionally at windows of homes and shops.

“It will soon be over,” von Bock said. He was picking his teeth contentedly. “The roastbrauten was underdone today,” he observed thoughtfully.

Captain Mueller clambered from the car and soon his young strident voice could be heard bawling orders down the line of stopped vehicles.

“I think I’ll take a look,” Michael said. “If I’m to tell the American public about this I shall want to be accurate.”

Von Bock chuckled appreciatively.

Michael stepped from the car and glanced swiftly down the line of lorries. The troopers were entering the houses at the far end of the village; already he could hear the tortured screams of women and children and occasionally the hoarse tragic shout of a man.

His lean face hardened and a merciless light flickered in his strange eyes. This was one more score to settle, one more crime to avenge.

With quick strides he crossed the dusty street and ducked between two buildings. The storm troopers were at the opposite end of the street, working down in his direction.

He ran along the path between the buildings. When he reached the rear of the building he vaulted a fence and climbed the rickety stairs built against the back of the filmsy wooden structure.

At the second landing he paused before a weather-beaten door and knocked rapidly three times. He paused and then knocked twice slowly.

There was silence beyond the door, then a cautious, shuffling step and the door opened a crack. The door was flung open then and Michael stepped quickly into a small room fitted as a laboratory.

A bent, white-haired man sat at a table littered with papers on which designs and mathematical symbols were scrawled. There was dazed, pathetic bewilderment in his mild blue eyes.

The man who had opened the door gripped Michael by the arm. Hot black eyes blazed in his tense face.

“For God’s sake, Michael,” he said, “what is it? The shouts, the screams, the truck loads of troopers. What are the devils up to, now?”

“Their usual trade,” Michael said bitterly. “Murder.” He took the man’s arm. “Paul, I have failed you. I wasn’t able to get here to warn you. Von Bock has stuck to me like a postage stamp this last week. The Nazis are here now to annihilate Lidice in retaliation for that bomb that blew Reinhardt Heydrich to hell.”

“I threw that bomb,” the man said simply. “I am sorry that innocents must suffer, but throwing that bomb was the finest thing I have ever done. My bomb and Henri’s bullets sent a monster out of this world. For that I am proud.”

“Where is Henri?” Michael asked. “He went to the other end of the village to get some tobacco.” Swift alarm flickered in his eyes. “Is he—”

“I’m afraid he is in their hands,” Michael said. “They started at the opposite end of the street. They will be here in a very short while. I am afraid that this is the end, Paul. There is no escape.”

Paul glanced at the white-haired man sitting at the table.

“Doctor Schultz and I are ready to go,” he said, “but you must not be found here. Go back and join von Bock. There is work yet for you to do. And you must remain alive to do that work. It is the most important work in the world. Go, quickly. When they find us — it will be all over in an instant.”

“Wait,” the white-haired man said quietly. He stood up slowly and his knees trembled under the burden of his frail, undernourished frame. There were grooved lines of suffering in the doctors’ face but there was a dignity and nobility in his eyes that was as clear as a beacon light over lashing waves.

“What is it, Doctor Schultz?” Michael asked gently.

“I can save one of you. In my last experiments with electrical dissemination of matter. I developed a device which renders opaque substances practically invisible to the naked eye.” The old doctor paused thoughtfully. “I did not disclose the results of my experiments because I knew the Nazi regime would subvert my invention and use it for their own brutal ends.”

“Do you mean,” Michael asked tensely, “that you have a device that will make a physical substance invisible? Such as a human body?”

“Precisely,” the doctor nodded.

“It seems incredible,” Michael breathed.

The doctor peered over his spectacles.

“There was a time,” he said, “when I was considered as a rather good scientist, you know. That seems a long time ago.”

“Not long enough for the world to have forgotten your work in electrotherapy, Doctor,” Michael said. “Crippled children who have been restored to health through your genius will never forget you.”

“I am glad,” the doctor said simply. “But there is not time to talk of such things now. We must work quickly.”

“But you?” Paul said. “You could save yourself with this device.”

“Save myself for what?” the doctor smiled gently. “There is no place for me in Nazi Germany. I am a healer. In Nazi Europe we need bomb-throwers, pistol-shooters, men of courage and strength. You two are such men.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Michael said simply. He turned to Paul. “There is no time to lose. You must take this chance.”

A sudden stacatto burst of machine gun fire sounded from the street. A woman’s scream, clear and terrible, pierced through the ugly roar of coughing death.

“They will soon be here,” the doctor said quietly.

The eyes of Paul were boiling pools of rage and his hands were clenching and unclenching spasmodically.

“I must live,” he whispered. “I must live. I must strike again and again at these swaggering swine. Nothing must stop me. That, I swear by my mother’s cross.”

The doctor hurried to a small closet and returned in an instant with a small compact device to which a metal headband was attached. He slipped it down over Paul’s head, adjusted the band firmly. There were two dials on the face of the small mechanism.

“The operation is simple, but there are not a half dozen men in the world today who could understand the principle,” the doctor said quietly. “The dial on the left turns the mechanism on, the right turns it off.”

The tumult in the street was growing louder by the second.

“There is little time left,” Michael said.

The doctor snapped the left dial into position and a faint humming noise gradually sounded in the room.

Michael watched tensely but there was no visible change in Paul’s appearance. He forced his nerves into calmness. His ears heard the shouts and running steps of men alongside the building. There was so little time left...

Suddenly the faint humming noise stopped. Michael looked sharply at the doctor. Had something gone wrong?

He swung about to Paul and an electric thrill shot through him.

Paul had disappeared!

No! His straining eyes made out a faint outline, a shadowy suggestion of a human form where Paul had stood.

“Can you hear me?” he asked quickly.

“Yes,” Paul answered. “I feel no change.”

Michael tensed suddenly as he heard booted feet pounding on the steps at the back of the building.

“Back into the corner,” he hissed to Paul. “If I can I will get rid of them.”

“There is no chance,” the doctor said. Michael saw that the doctor was holding a small revolver in his hands. There was a sad, slow smile on his seamed face.

“How a man lives is not always important,” the doctor murmured, “but how a man dies is always important. Au revoir, my friend. The world is in your hands. May God give you strength and wisdom.”

Without haste the white-haired doctor placed the gun against his side and pulled the trigger. He was smiling as he fell to the floor.

An instant later there was a clamor outside and a heavy fist pounded mightily against the door.

“Open, dogs!” a guttural voice snarled. “Open in the name of the Fuehrer.”

Michael bent and took the gun from the doctor’s hand. He wheeled toward the corner where Paul crouched, a faint, barely discernible shadow in the gloom of the room.

“Paul!” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“The underground pass-word has been changed. It is now ‘The time is near at hand.’ Do you hear?”

“Yes. ‘The time is near at hand.’ I will not forget.”

The door was trembling under the shattering impact of a heavy fist. A hoarse, bestial voice cried:

“Smash it down!”

Michael shot a quick look at the door. It would hold for another few seconds but that was all.

“Meet me tonight at the transmitter,” he whispered to Paul. “Luck!”

He stepped quickly to the door, gun in hand, and threw back the bolt. The door crashed inward and a gray-clad storm trooper lunged into the room, tripped and fell forward on his face.

“Ah! Impetuous youth,” Michael murmured.

The stocky, hard-faced Captain Mueller strode into the room, followed by three soldiers with drawn Lugers. The storm trooper who had lunged through the door was picking himself sheepishly from the floor.

Captain Mueller glared about the room, his pale eyes sweeping from the doctor’s huddled figure to the gun in Michael’s hand.

“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped. “You are getting yourself into trouble, Herr Faber.

“Trouble?” Michael said, raising one eyebrow. “For shooting enemies of the Reich? I hardly think so, my young Captain. I would suggest that you read again the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf and stop making ridiculous speeches.”

A hot angry flush stained the thick neck of the captain. He glared savagely at Michael, then shifted his gaze to the body on the floor.

“Who is this man?” he snapped.

Michael shook his head sadly.

“I am surprised at you, Captain,” he said. “This was the Herr Doctor Schultz. He wrote and lectured incessantly against the doctrines of the Nazi State.”

Captain Mueller looked slowly about the room.

“Was he the only one here? I am looking for a Paul Cheval. Our Intelligence reported that he was hiding here in Lidice.” His pale eyes fastened on Michael.

“You haven’t seen Paul Cheval, have you, Herr Faber?” he asked.

“That name is a familiar one.” Michael said thoughtfully. “But I haven’t seen the man. Possibly he slipped through your ranks and made an escape.”

“Impossible!” Captain Mueller retorted. He glared about the room and there was a puzzled, suspicious expression on his hard features.

“Strange,” he said. “I feel that he is here now.”

“Disguised as one of your soldiers?” Michael suggested sarcastically.

Captain Mueller glared at him in rage.

“That tongue of yours will get you in trouble yet,” he stormed. He wheeled to his men. “Come! We are wasting our time here.” He gestured to Michael. “You had better come with us. Marshal von Bock will want an explanation for this matter.”

Michael followed Captain Mueller to the street. He noticed that soldiers were pouring gasoline about the wooden bases of the buildings. A worried line creased his forehead. Paul was still in the doctor’s laboratory and these buildings were veritable tinder boxes of combustion...

Marshal von Bock was standing beside his car, a pleased, relaxed expression on his swarthy, oily face.

Captain Mueller saluted.

“Marshal, there is something—”

Marshal von Bock waved him away carelessly.

“Another time. Do not bother me with details.” He took Michael by the arm and pointed down the street. “Is not that a pretty scene, my American friend?”

Michael had steeled his nerves for the sight but an involuntary shudder shook him as his eyes moved over the spectacle of human savagery.

Hundreds of machine-gunned bodies were sprawled in the dust of the street like tragic, broken dolls. Storm troopers walked among the pile of human debris with fixed bayonets, the blades stained a dripping crimson red. Blood was everywhere, splashed on store fronts, sidewalks and street.

The women of the village were being herded into trucks like cattle; their children were stripped brutally from their arms and sent stumbling to the outskirts of the village.

Michael had seen ugly brutality every day he had spent in Nazi-dominated lands. But nothing he had seen equaled this barbarous spectacle. There was something cold-blooded and unclean about this wanton butchery of innocents, this savage despoiling of homes and children, the lusting, inhuman cruelty of this scene that brought the blood pounding to his temples.

Marshal von Bock was watching him carefully.

“You do not seem particularly impressed,” he said.

Michael fought back his feelings, forced a mask of indifference over his face. He shrugged.

“It is simply a job well done,” he said.

“That is right,” von Bock said delightedly. “It is a job well done. The village of Lidice will be but a memory in a few hours. Not one man escaped and not one building will be left standing.”

Captain Mueller said, “I am not so sure that no men escaped. I am afraid that one did.”

“Who?” von Bock said sharply.

“Paul Cheval, a notorious saboteur and underground worker,” Captain Mueller answered.

“What makes you think he escaped?” Captain Mueller looked uncomfortable. “It is just a feeling I have.”

“Bah!” von Bock shorted. “You and your feelings. There is no place for mysticism in your work, Captain.” Michael was watching the wooden structure from which they had just emerged. Flames were licking up the wooden sides in greedy haste. The entire village would be a vast pyre for the men whose lives had been sacrificed in the name of the Third Reich.

Suddenly, through the curtain of smoke and flame that obscured the building, he saw a faint shadowy figure emerge. The faintly visible form paused for an instant, and Michael saw a shadowy arm raised in salute, then the vague shape moved rapidly away, disappearing around the corner of the flaming building.

“What are you looking at?” von Bock asked.

Michael smiled but his cat-like yellow eyes were as sharp and hard as pieces of flint.

“Nothing,” he said, “nothing at all.” Captain Mueller ran a puzzled hand through his cropped hair. His thick face wore a bewildered scowl.

“There is something funny here,” he said. “I still think the man we want has made an escape.”

Michael smiled and patted the captain’s beefy shoulder.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if you were right,” he said.

Captain Mueller ran a hand over his jaw and there was a thoughtful gleam in his eyes as he studied Michael Faber.

Chapter IV

The dark of late evening had settled over the city of Prague. The guard in front of the Nazi Propaganda building was leaning against his rifle when Michael Faber arrived at the main entrance.

The guard saluted hesitantly.

“I thought you had gone for the day, Herr Faber,” he said.

“Did you, now?” Michael said. “That proves that the best of us can be wrong, doesn’t it? Will you open up, please?”

“But Herr Faber,” the guard protested, “I have received very strict orders to leave no one in the building after hours unless accompanied by the Herr Minister.”

“My dear fellow,” Michael said, “the B.B.C. is at this moment broadcasting information which is vital to our armies. Are you going to stand in the way of the Third Reich’s securing that information?”

“But no—”

“Then kindly open the door. You are a good fellow, Henry, but you must be careful about thinking too much. The Fuehrer you know doesn’t like people who think. Thank you.”

Michael paused in the doorway.

“By the way, Henry, who gave you the orders not to leave anyone into the broadcasting offices after hours?”

“Captain Mueller, sir. He brought an order signed by Marshal von Bock.”

“I see. Excellent men, both. Good night.”

Michael strode briskly through the darkened corridors of the building until he came to a small office on the first floor. He opened the door, snapped on a light and entered.

The small room was completely fitted as a sending and receiving radio station. Michael tossed his hat on his desk and sat down, frowning.

It was two o’clock in the morning. The previous afternoon he had witnessed the destruction of Lidice. Now, in a few minutes, he would receive a code message, intermingled with a regular B.B.C. broadcast, giving him his next instructions.

The order of von Bock delivered by Captain Mueller, bothered him. He could easily enough arrange to have the B.B.C. messages sent in at another time, but the order might be an indication that he was no longer trusted. There had been definite suspicion in Captain Mueller’s eyes and voice the previous day, and if he had communicated his suspicions to von Bock, there might be trouble. And that was patting it mildly.

Michael stood up and closed the door, then he switched on the powerful receiving set and adjusted the delicate instruments. In a moment the voice of the English announcer flooded through the room. It was a standard broadcast to the peoples of Europe telling the truth of what was happening on the major battle fronts, and Michael knew that hundreds of forbidden radio sets were transmitting those truths to thousands of tense, hopeful men and women on the continent of Europe.

He glanced at his watch. When the hands stood exactly at 2:08 he leaned forward, and began scribbling furiously on a pad on the desk. He took the message down in English, a risky procedure, but knew he might not have time to code and decode it later. The only key to the code used by the B.B.C. was in Michael’s head, and this single fact had been responsible, largely, for his success.

He covered several sheets with his fast scrawl. At 2:10 the code message stopped abruptly. Michael turned down the volume of the receiver and then carefully studied the message he had received from London Intelligence.

Hunched over his desk, he was so absorbed in his task, that he didn’t hear the slight creak as the door behind him slowly opened. But he felt the light draft on the back of his neck and his muscles tensed. One hand closed slowly over the scrawled sheets of paper he’d been reading. The scrawled sheet that bore the message from London Intelligence.

“Late hours you’re keeping, Herr Faber,” a cool clear voice said behind him.

Michael turned slowly in his chair, his face and eyes expressionless.

Marie Kahn stood in the doorway, a queer smile on her lips. She was wearing a crimson evening gown and fed sandals. Her flaming hair fell to Her bare white shoulders, framing the exquisite perfection of her classically molded features.

There was no expression on her marble-white face and her cool gray eyes studied Michael with an impassive, inscrutable regard.

“Your devotion to your work is very commendable,” she said quietly, per glance moved to the paper in Michael’s hand. “That must be a very important communication, Herr Faber. You hold it as though your life depended-on it. May I see it? Or is it confidential?”

“It’s nothing important,” Michael said. “Just a dull summary or the last B.B.C. report. Nothing that would interest a beautiful girl in a hew evening gown, at least. But you shouldn’t be thinking of tiresome details on a night like this. Dressed as you are your thoughts should be of moonlight and music and the lucky young man who should be holding you in his arms. Don’t you agree, Fraulein?”

“A pretty speech,” the girl murmured. “Something I hardly expected to hear from you. One good surprise deserves another, Herr Faber.” She paused and said softly, “The time is near at hand.”

Michael remained perfectly still; not a muscle moved in his lean face; but his brain was racing feverishly.

She had said, “The time is near at hand!”

And that phrase was the pass word of the underground fighters in Nazi-dominated Europe!

The words seemed to linger in the room beating against his ears. The girl was studying him impassively, but there was a faint smile curving her lips.

“I don’t understand,” Michael said. “Did you say that the time was near at hand?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry if I seem stupid,” Michael said, smiling, “but I don’t follow you. The time is near at hand for what?”

“I’m not sure,” the girl said. Her eyes dropped again to the papers in his hand. “Perhaps that information is on those sheets of paper in your hand.”

Michael stood up suddenly, crossed the room and closed the door. He took the girl by the shoulders and stared deep into her gray eyes.

“I can’t believe it,” he said softly. “I’d have sworn you were with those devils, heart and soul. My congratulations. You are an excellent actress. But how did you know me?”

“One of our men in Berlin told me to see you,” the girl said. “Your position is becoming very dangerous. Several officials have become suspicious of your work. There is the possibility of an investigation.”

“I have been expecting that,” Michael said. “But I still have a few weeks. And that’s all the time I need.”

“No,” the girl said quickly, “the situation is more serious than that. That is why I came tonight to warn you.” Michael noticed that the girl’s cheeks were tinted with warm color and there was fire and spirit in her deep gray eyes.

She was a woman, alive and glowing, and the mantle of glacial hardness had fallen from her, revealing a vital beauty that was thrilling in its perfection.

“I have been with Captain Mueller tonight,” she said. “I left him a few moments ago at a cafe. He is bitterly suspicious of you and he has talked to von Bock. I think he has half convinced him that you should be jailed until an investigation is made. He told me that much tonight. I slipped away from him to warn you.”

Michael’s face hardened.

“I can’t let anything stop me now,” he said. “I’ve just received an order from London Intelligence. Probably the most important assignment I’ve ever gotten. I can’t fail. I have to go to Berlin immediately.”

“But how?” Marie demanded. “It is suicide now.”

“Not quite,” Michael said grimly. His yellow eyes were savagely gleaming. “I have had arrangements made for a plane for several days. I’ve been expecting this job. You’ve got to throw Mueller off my trail for a few hours at least. That will give me time to clear out of here. Can you do it?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “I will try.”

“Good. It will take me only a few moments to destroy everything of importance here. Then I’ll leave for the air-port. Where did you say you left Captain Mueller?”

The girl was opening her mouth to answer, when the door behind her opened suddenly.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” a harsh, guttural voice said.

The owner of the voice was Captain Mueller. He stood in the doorway, filling it with his solid bulk. His hard, chiseled face was alight with sadistic amusement. He looked from Michael to the girl, and his pale eyes were suspiciously narrowed.

“You both seem nervous,” he said slowly. “What is there to be nervous about?”

The girl stepped suddenly away from Michael and placed herself beside the captain.

“Your suspicions were correct, Captain Mueller,” she said coldly. “Let me congratulate you.” Her eyes were expressionlessly cold as she regarded Michael. “This American is a spy. He has admitted it to me. He has just received a code message from the British broadcast. The message is in his hand right now.”

“So,” Captain Mueller said softly, “I was right.” His eyes met Michael’s in mocking triumph. “American swine,” he said harshly, “you will pay for this treachery with your life.” His hand closed over the butt of the Luger strapped to his side.

Michael said nothing and his lean face was bleak and hard. The girl met his smouldering gaze defiantly.

“It would be pleasant to meet you again,” he said quietly.

“Fraulein Kahn,” Captain Mueller said suddenly. “Why did you come here to this American?”

“It was my duty as a member of the Reich,” the girl said coldly. “You said that you were suspicious of him and I felt I could trick him into betraying himself more easily than you.”

Captain Mueller grinned softly.

“You are very clever, Fraulein. I will see that your superior officer hears of your good work.” His grin broadened. “I can admit now that at one time I was suspicious even of you.”

“Such caution is commendable,” the girl said quietly. “It is impossible to be too careful in these matters.”

“We think alike, Fraulein,” Obtain Mueller said.

He drew the Luger from his holster and stepped past the girl toward Michael.

“You will come with me,” he said to the American. “Any attempt to escape will be very unwise. I would enjoy shooting you in the stomach, Herr Faber.”

“Why not the back?” Michael said ironically. His thin face was sardonically impassive, but the muscles of his body were coiled like tight springs, ready to strike at the slightest opportunity. “The back is the favorite Nazi target, you know.”

“Dog!” Captain Mueller snapped. “I should break your stupid face for such an insult to our Reich.”

Flushed with anger, he stepped forward and Michael saw, from the corner of his eye, the girl behind him reach out swiftly and pick up a heavy ash tray. Hope flickered in his eyes.

Captain Mueller caught the look and his face hardened suspiciously.

“What—” He broke off and wheeled as suddenly as a cat.

The girl was raising the ash tray over her head, ready to swing down with all her strength.

“So!” he snarled. “You are in with him. Did you think you could fool me?”

He swung the gun around to cover the girl. His face was brutal and dark. There was blood-lust in his small, piggish eyes.

For the first time his eyes were off Michael.

And Michael lunged forward, driving his hard shoulder with all his wiry strength into the back of the German officer’s knees. The savage suddenness of the attack hurled the captain’s heavy body to the floor in a tangled sprawl. Michael’s fist closed on the German’s gun wrist with vise-like pressure, as they rolled on the floor, locked fiercely together.

The gun fell from Captain Mueller’s hand, but before Michael could press his advantage, the German, with a savage twist, hurled him loose and staggered to his feet. He groped for the gun, but Michael lashed out with his foot, catching him in the shoulder and knocking him back against the wall of the office.

The girl kicked the gun out of reach as Captain Mueller lunged forward again. Enraged, he struck her with the back of his heavy hand across the face. A livid mark stained the whiteness of her face and she fell against the desk, her hands pressed to the angry red mark.

Michael rose, cat-like, to his feet.

His narrow face was tense and the centers of his yellow eyes were smoky pools of savage rage.

“You are effective against women, Captain,” he said softly. An inarticulate growl sounded deep in the German officer’s throat as he charged forward, his fists swinging like mallets.

Michael side-stepped and snapped a hard left into his face. Captain Mueller’s head jerked back and blood trickled from his mouth.

“Dog!” he roared.

He lowered his bullet-shaped head and rushed Michael, backing him toward a corner. Michael’s left hand flicked out, again and again, like the darting tongue of a snake, blinding the charging German. But Captain Mueller’s superior weight and strength drove the American relentlessly back until he was trapped in a corner of the room.

Ducking a round-house right swing Michael stepped in close and drove a hard, chopping right into the German’s jowls. The punch packed behind it all of his wiry power and he felt its shock all the way to his elbow.

The captain staggered back, cursing madly through his blood-frothed lips. Michael stepped in again, recklessly. He knew he had to finish this quickly or the guards would be drawn to the scene by the noise.

He swung again, but Mueller blocked the blow and countered with a vicious right, Michael’s guard was down and the blow landed solidly on his jaw, slamming him back against the wall. His head snapped back, crashing into the wall, and a million streaking lights exploded in his brain.

His knees sagged; his head slumped down on his chest. Through a red fog of pain he could dimly see Captain Mueller’s stocky figure standing in front of him, gloatingly expectant.

He tried to lift his arms but he lacked the strength. His breath was a rasping pain in his throat. He knew he was through, that this was the end.

Captain Mueller turned suddenly and crossed the room with rapid strides. He bent and picked up the gun from the floor and turned back to Michael, the ugly blue hole in the Luger barrel centered unwaveringly on his stomach.

“You have lost, Herr Faber,” Captain Mueller said, his breath coming heavily. “There will be no trial and execution for you. I will provide both.”

Michael lifted his head slowly. He saw the bestial triumph in Mueller’s eyes and he saw the twitching muscles of the hand that held the Luger; and he knew that he was facing death.

Suddenly an English voice roared in the room.

Mueller started and swung half way around. The red-haired girl, Michael saw, had flicked on the powerful receiving set; the voice in the room was that of the B.B.C. announcer. But the ruse had diverted, for an instant, the German’s attention; had given Michael one thousand-to-one chance. And he took that chance.

Gathering his fading strength, he hurled himself across the room at the German’s surprised figure. Mueller wheeled, whipping the gun about to cover Michael. But he was too late. Michael drove into his gun arm, doubling the wrist inward and, as the two men crashed to the floor, a muffled explosion sounded.

The girl screamed as a hoarse, strained gasp followed the sound of the shot. She dropped to her knees and pulled Michael from the German’s body. There was blood on his shirt front but it was from the oozing stain that was spreading slowly over Captain Mueller’s chest.

Her lips moved in a silent prayer. “Thank God,” she murmured. She pulled Michael’s head close to her and he opened his eyes and smiled faintly.

“Pleasant as this is,” he said, “we’ll have to postpone it for a while.”

He stood up and turned down the radio.

“That was a neat trick,” he said, looking down at her. “It undoubtedly saved my life, which isn’t so important, but the work I have to do is important. Thank you for that.”

He helped her to her feet.

“You fooled me again when he came in,” he said. “I thought surely I’d misjudged you. I believed you when you said you’d come here to trick me into revealing myself as a British agent.”

“It was the only thing I could do,” the girl answered. “We are lucky he was stupid enough to believe me. Now we must plan to get you out of here. Do you think the guard could have heard the shot?”

“It isn’t likely,” Michael said. “The radio was on full blast and the sound of the shot was muffled. Our luck is still holding.”

He unfolded the paper of instructions he still held in his hand and studied it intently, a faint frown forming on his lean face.

“This is urgent,” he said. “Every second, now, is precious. Get ready to leave. I’ll dispose of the body in a less conspicuous spot. It won’t be discovered until tomorrow morning. And by that time our work will be done.” Michael opened the door and glanced up and down the corridor. Seeing that the way was clear he bent and hoisted the heavy body of the dead German officer to his shoulder and stepped into the corridor. Lurching under his awkward burden he moved silently down the hallway until he reached an intersecting corridor. He followed this for several yards until he came to a small closet. Opening the door he dumped the German’s body on the floor and covered it with a tarpaulin he found hanging on the wall.

Then he closed and locked the door. As he started back a sudden, chilling scream shattered the stillness. Michael froze in the darkness of the hall, his heart pounding. A thousand speculations seemed to crowd his brain.

The scream sounded again, a helpless, terror-filled cry of anguish that chilled the marrow in his bones. He hesitated for another second, his mind working with lightning-speed, then he broke into a charging run.

Chapter V

As Michael raced toward the sound of the scream he realized with sudden helplessness that he was completely unarmed. He had left the German’s Luger lying on the floor of the radio room.

He charged recklessly around the corner of the corridor. But the sight that met his eyes brought him to a sudden, incredulous halt.

Marie was standing in front of the open door of the radio room, her body stiffened in a posture of terror and a white mask of dread stamped on her lovely features.

But there was no one else in sight. There was nothing to account for her expression of terror. She was completely alone in the dimly lighted corridor.

As Michael started toward her, his eyes followed the gaze of her wide, horror-filled eyes and he suddenly saw what had attracted her frightened, fascinated stare.

In the gloom of the corridor, not a foot from her face, a heavy black gun was visible, menacing her with its grim blue-holed muzzle.

The gun was suspended in the air, five feet from the floor, a chilling, unnatural spectacle that apparently defied the laws of gravity.

Then Michael saw the shadowy hand that held the gun, and against the uncertain gloom of the hall he made out a vague spectral shape crouched before the girl’s terrified figure.

A flood of relief washed over him.

“Paul!” he cried. He broke into £ run. “Don’t shoot; it’s all right.”

He saw the shadowy suggestion of a head turn toward him, then the gun lowered slowly. The girl leaned weakly against the wall. There was pathetic relief in her eyes as she saw Michael, but a wordless horror still lingered on her white features.

“Michael,” she gasped. “What is it? Am I losing my mind?”

Michael put his arm about her slim bare shoulders and drew her close to him. She laid her head against his breast, sobbing.

“There’s nothing to fear,” he murmured. “This is Paul Cheval, the man who eliminated Heydrich.”

“But—”

“I know. You can’t see him. But neither can the Gestapo, which is quite an advantage.”

A faint humming sounded, grew louder, finally fading away to an indistinct murmur. Gradually the shadowy shape of Paul Cheval materialized. He stood before them, the gun still held in a hand at his side, his dark face grimly anxious. The invisibility head-piece was still strapped to his forehead.

Michael introduced him to the girl and rapidly explained to her how he had come into possession of the headpiece at the destruction of Lidice.

Paul glanced nervously down the darkened corridors.

“There is not much time for talk,” he said. “The Storm Troopers of Captain Mueller are outside, waiting for a signal from him to enter. They will not wait much longer.”

“I am leaving for Berlin immediately,” Michael said. “You’ve got to hold the Troopers for a few minutes, Paul, while Marie and I slip out the back door. I have just received information from London that the second front will soon be opened on the continent. My orders are to contact every underground worker I possibly can with this news. We’ve got to strike at the Nazis with everything we’ve got. Rumors, assassinations, sabotage — all of these must be increased a hundredfold. We’ve got to give the Storm Troopers and Gestapo so much to do inside Europe that they’ll take their eyes off the outside. Our job is to turn the continent of Europe into a cauldron of boiling trouble for the Nazis. Heydrich’s death is only the start. From now on nothing must stop us.”

Paul nodded. “Nothing shall stop us. The people of this region are ready for open revolt. Already fifteen hundred innocent hostages have been killed for the assassination of Heydrich. And more will be killed every day. The people have reached the breaking point.”

“Good!” Michael snapped. “The Nazis are choking themselves to death with their own blood lust.” He reached out suddenly and gripped Paul’s shoulder. “When I finish my assignment in Berlin I am going back to London. Those are my orders. A camouflaged R.A.F. plane will pick me up when my work is done. But the fight here must go on. You must not falter, Paul. The second front is coming, but the dominated peoples inside Europe must prepare for it as carefully as our Allies outside Europe.”

He broke off suddenly. Through the dark building came the echoing tread of swiftly striding booted feet.

“The Storm Troopers of Captain Mueller!” Marie cried.

“We must go!” Michael said softly. “This is goodbye, Paul. Hold them for a few seconds, at least. That will give us a start.”

Paul’s hand flicked up to the dial on his head-piece. The humming noise sounded and then his body faded slowly, almost imperceptibly, into the dark gloom of the corridor. His eyes were visible for a last instant, cold and gleaming in the blackness.

“I will hold them,” he whispered. “Now go!” His formless, invisible hand touched Michael’s arm for an instant. “Until we meet again.” Then he faded away toward the sound of advancing troopers.

Michael took Marie’s hand and ted her swiftly through the blackened corridors, toward a rear door, which he knew would be unguarded.

A shot suddenly echoed through the building, followed by hoarse, confused shouts. Another shot rang out. And the sound of booted feet scrambling for cover could be heard.

Michael’s hand gripped Marie’s tightly as they slipped from the building into the narrow alley-way that flanked it. His thin face was set in hard lines; his yellow-green eyes flashed in the darkness.

The sound of another shot was heard; three more followed in quick succession.

“Michael!” Marie whispered tensely. “Has Paul a chance of escaping?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But if he doesn’t, he’ll send a number of Nazis to hell before they get him. Come, we have to hurry.”

Chapter VI

The sleek light bomber settled gracefully to a sprawling landing field on the outskirts of Berlin. The pilot cut the throbbing roar of the engines as the plane taxied to a stop facing the administration buildings of the field.

An attendant ran to the plane and adjusted a portable stairway to the gleaming side of the ship. Then he swung open the door.

“Thank you,” Michael Faber said, smiling. “I see that you received my radio message. Is the car waiting?”

“Yes, Herr Faber,” the attendant said, “everything is in readiness. Do you wish to leave immediately?”

“Yes. Speed is essential.”

“I will take you to your car.” Michael strode down the sloping walk to the field. Marie Kahn followed him, walking carefully on her high-heeled evening shoes. She wore Michael’s suit coat over her bare shoulders.

Michael held her hand tightly as they hurried across the field to where a low-slung, powerful car awaited them.

“Our luck is still holding,” he whispered. “Obviously Mueller’s body hasn’t been discovered yet.”

The slanting rays of false dawn were coloring the blackness of the eastern horizon and, despite the season, there was a noticeable chill in the air.

The landing-field attendant opened the door of the waiting car with a flourish and stepped aside.

“You will be at your destination in twenty minutes, Herr Faber,” he said. He smiled brightly. “I trust I have handled everything to your satisfaction, Herr Faber.”

“Absolutely,” Michael said. “And I shall see that word of your good work is passed on to your superiors.”

“Oh, thank you, Herr Faber.” Michael helped Marie into the car and stepped in after her.

“Central Intelligence,” he said to the driver, a stocky, blonde man wearing, a corporal’s uniform. “And hurry!” The driver nodded without turning. The gears of the car meshed smoothly and it shot away from the field, rapidly gathering speed.

Michael looked down at the red-haired girl at his side and he smiled softly.

“So far, so good,” he murmured.

“We have been lucky,” the girl said. “Let us pray our luck holds.”

“It must hold,” Michael said grimly. Nothing more was said until they reached the blacked-out Unter den Linden and turned off on a deserted side street that led to the Central Intelligence offices.

“Do you know any of the staff at Central?” Michael asked quietly.

“No. Why?”

“It might have helped if you did. The problem of getting in at this hour of the morning might be difficult. But we’ll manage.”

“The office is in charge of Marshal von Umbreit,” the girl said, “but I know nothing of him.”

The car rolled to a smooth stop a few moments later in front of a modern, white-fronted building. The building was completely dark and sandbags were piled high against the walls.

The driver got out and opened the door.

“Will that be all, sir?” he asked.

Michael noticed that a half dozen guards were on patrol in front of the building and that two of them had halted and were watching the car.

“Yes,” Michael said, “that will be all.”

He stepped out into the dark street and gave his hand to Marie. When she stood beside him on the sidewalk the driver saluted jerkily, got back into the car and drove off.

Michael took the girl’s arm.

“Follow my lead,” he whispered. In a louder voice, he said, “Come, Fraulein, there is not a minute to lose.”

The words carried clearly in the dead silence of the night.

Michael saw the two guards moving slowly toward them, their booted feet sounding ominously on the hard sidewalk, but he pretended to be unaware of their presence.

With his hand on Marie’s arm he strode briskly toward the main entrance of the Central Intelligence building. The booted feet broke into a run and a guttural voice cried, “Halt!”

With his foot on the first step leading up to the building’s main door, Michael paused. He turned as the two guards approached at a lumbering run, rifles held in readiness.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Just the men I wanted to see. Where the devil were you hiding yourselves?

Napping on post, I dare say.” He turned to Marie. “Make a note of that, Fraulein. It’s time steps were taken about such carelessness.”

The two guards came to a stop, their mouths dropping in amazement. The larger of the two, a florid-faced, cold-eyed example of the Prussian type, stuttered speechlessly.

“What is the meaning of this?” he finally managed to bellow. “Who are you? What do you want here at this time of night? Where are your papers?”

“You want a lot of information, don’t you?” Michael murmured. “Has it ever occurred to you that the British, too, want precisely that same type of information? No, of course it hasn’t. My good fellow, we are here to see Marshal von Umbreit. If you can take us to him, please do so. If not, find us someone capable of performing that task. We have no time to waste.”

The guard’s beefy face reddened.

“Marshal von Umbreit,” he fumed, “will not be here for another five hours. I demand to see your papers.”

Michael studied the man with cold, deliberate eyes.

“Would you be good enough,” he said, “to tell me when you had your last discussion with the marshal about his plans for this morning?”

“I have had no discussion with the marshal,” the guard said, flustered, “but it is his custom—”

“Bah!” Michael said in disgust. “How can we win a war handicapped by clods like you?” He whipped out his wallet and held his identification under the guard’s nose. “I am a special agent from Marshal von Bock. “Tell me, have you heard of Marshal von Bock?”

“But, of course,” the guard mumbled. “I—”

“This is Fraulein Marie Kahn,” Michael snapped, “from the office of Heinrich Himmler. Have you heard of him?”

“Yes—”

“We are here to see Marshal von Umbreit in regard to the assassination of Upper Group Leader Heydrich. Is that name familiar to you, Herr Dumpkoff?”

“Certainly,” the guard cried, his voice breaking slightly. “I—”

“You’re progressing,” Michael said gently. “Now,” he said, his voice hardening, “will you take us to Marshal von Umbreit’s office, or shall I call Himmler?”

“This is against my instructions,” the guard moaned. “If anything happens—”

Michael turned to the red-haired girl.

“What is Himmler’s private number?” he asked.

“No!” the guard almost shrieked. “Do not call him. It will not be necessary. I–I will take you to the marshal’s office. Come with me.” Michael’s hand closed tightly over the girl’s as they followed the guard up the steps of the building to the main entrance.

The guard swung wide the heavy brass doors and preceded them into the darkened interior of the building. He drew a torch from his pocket and shot a beam of light down a wide, heavily carpeted hallway.

“Because of the blackout,” he said, “we can have no lights.”

“Oh, is that why?” Michael said. “I thought for a minute you were just being economical.”

“Oh, no,” the guard chuckled. “It is the blackout orders. It is silly, but it is an order.”

“Silly?” Michael said. “You don’t think the R.A.F. will come this way?”

“Of course not,” the guard said. He led them down the wide corridor, past imposingly lettered doors, toward a heavy double door at the end of the hall.

“You seem confident about not being bombed,” Michael said, “but how about Cologne? They tell me there was a raid over that city.”

“British lies,” the guard scoffed. “The German radio said no damage was done. One report said that only a few cows were hit by bombs.”

“That’s right,” Michael said, “but those cows burned for five days.”

“That’s right,” the guard smiled. “They burned for five—”

He stopped smiling and looked sharply at Michael. He scratched his head slowly and a peculiar look of bewilderment spread over his blunt features.

“Five days,” he mumbled. “That’s a long time for cows to burn, no?”

“An ordinary cow might not burn that long,” Michael said, “but naturally the superior breed of German cow would be a different matter.”

They stopped in front of the double doors at the end of the corridor and the guard stepped aside.

“This is Marshal von Umbreit’s office. You can wait for him here. Will you need my light?”

“Possibly,” Michael said. “I’d better take it just in case. Thank you very much. I shall see that your superiors hear of your good work.”

The guard’s face beamed.

“Thank you, Herr Faber.”

He started away and then turned back, his forehead wrinkled in perplexity.

“I do not mean to be disloyal,” he said, “but five days is still a long time for cows to burn.” With an embarrassed frown he wheeled and marched back down the corridor.

Michael watched until he opened the building’s brass doors and disappeared into the street, before drawing Marie into Marshal von Umbreit’s office and closing and locking the door.

Marie leaned weakly against the wall and laughed hysterically.

Michael took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.

“Stop it!” he said tensely. “The big job is still ahead of us. Get hold of yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Marie said, pressing her hands to her face. “I’m all right now. But sometimes I have the feeling that something inside of me is ready to snap. I’ve had that feeling many times in the last two years.”

“I know,” Michael said softly. He lifted her chin with his finger and smiled into her deep gray eyes. “I’ve felt that myself. It’s not pleasant. But then neither is the thing we’re fighting against pleasant.”

“I’m ashamed of myself,” the girl said.

“You haven’t any reason for being.” Michael said quietly. “You’ve been magnificent. But you can’t fold now. We still have a job ahead of us.”

He flashed the torch about the large, luxuriously appointed office. Under the inevitable swastika there was a huge mahogany desk in immaculate order.

Michael crossed to the desk and studied the drawers for an instant.

“It wouldn’t be in a drawer,” he muttered. Nevertheless he tried the drawers, but all were locked.

“You haven’t told me what you’re looking for,” Marie said.

“I’m after a roll of film,” Michael answered. “Our Intelligence learned that the Germans had photographed the camouflaging that has been done on the French coast. These films are in microscopic scale. With special reproduction apparatus they can be blown up into eight by ten photographs. It is extremely vital that these films reach British hands. The entire plan for the second front depends on discovering what areas are camouflaged. Aerial photography isn’t completely satisfactory, so the only alternative is to borrow the actual small scale German films. And that’s just what we’re going to do.”

“Have you any idea where they are?”

“Roughly, they’re in this office.”

He played his torch over the walls and ceiling and then inspected the desk again.

“Hardly in the desk. Too easy to steal.” He frowned. “But there’d be no point in hiding them. The logical place would be an easily accessible repository that would be burglar proof.”

“A wall safe?” Marie suggested. “Probably,” Michael nodded.

Marie turned suddenly and swept back the swastika from the wall.

“This is what you want, then. This is a favorite place of concealment in German offices.”

Michael saw a small steel wall safe set in the bared wall. He stepped quickly to it and slowly turned the dial with his long, sensitive fingers.

“I have the combination,” he murmured. “It was obligingly furnished by one of our workers here.”

For several seconds he spun the tiny gleaming dial, then he pulled suddenly and the door swung noiselessly open. He pointed the flash into the small dark interior and saw several sheafs of paper and, at the far end of the safe, the object for which he was searching. A tiny roll of films.

“We’ve done it,” he said excitedly. He removed the films, checked them carefully but hastily, then shoved them into his trouser pocket. His lean face was gleaming with triumph.

“By dawn we’ll be flying for London,” he cried. “We’ve got to leave immediately. Every second is working against us.”

He turned back to close the wall safe. When he had closed it and drawn the swastika back into place he wheeled to the girl.

“Every step takes us nearer England,” he said tensely. “We mustn’t falter.”

“We won’t,” Marie said.

Michael took her arm and started across the floor. Suddenly lights flashed on in the room. From overhead and wall sockets bright bulbs blazed into brilliance.

Michael’s body froze in a crouch. He jerked Marie to a stop.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “We’ll have to find another way out.” Hardly had the words passed his lips when the great double door of the office swung inward, and the short, pigeon-puffy form of Marshal von Bock stepped into the room.

Two Storm Troopers followed him, Lugers drawn.

Von Bock’s thick lips were curved in a sadistic smile. But his eyes were angry and cold.

“How fortunate we discovered your little game, Herr Faber,” he said in his soft, lisping voice.

Chapter VII

For an instant there was complete silence in the room. The tension grew until Michael gradually relaxed and allowed a slow ironic smile to light his pale, thin features.

“What a suspicious nature you have, Marshal,” he remarked mildly. “Please tell those determined men with you to put their guns away before they shoot someone accidentally.”

“They will not shoot anyone by accident,” von Bock said significantly. “Your clever tongue will not save you this time, Herr Faber. You have reached the end of your very long rope. I have just seen the body of Captain Mueller.”

“Gracious,” Michael murmured. “Is he dead? What happened to the poor chap?”

“Stop stalling!” von Bock snapped. “You killed him. I know that. And it will be our pleasure to execute you as a British agent. Or is it America you’re working for, Herr Faber?”

Michael shrugged. “That’s a technicality, isn’t it? What difference does it make?”

Von Bock nodded to the two Storm Troopers.

“Search him.”

The two men went over Michael carefully. They handed the roll of film to von Bock along with his personal effects.

“I think I know what this is,” von Bock said, studying the film. “Yes, it is very fortunate we stopped you before you left Europe, Herr Faber.” He turned his round head slightly and studied the red-haired girl. “Your presence here, Fraulein Kahn, I find rather puzzling. Perhaps you can clear the doubts that are plucking at my mind.”

“There is nothing puzzling about my presence here, Marshal von Bock,” the girl answered coldly. “Captain Mueller and I were working together to trap the American. Unfortunately we underestimated our opponent. He shot Captain Mueller with his own gun and forced me to accompany him here because I knew the layout of the building. I imagine he intended to kill me later.”

“What a harrowing experience for you, Fraulein” von Bock said mildly.

Michael risked a quick glance at the marshal, but it was impossible to tell from the man’s expressionless, moonlike face what he was thinking.

He paced slowly back and forth, tugging at his fat under lip.

“I must make a report of this matter personally,” he said thoughtfully. “Marshal von Umbreit must be notified immediately.” He turned again to Marie. “I shall leave the American in your hands. I shall leave these two men with you, however, for he might become troublesome.” He nodded to one of the Storm Troopers. “Tie his arms behind him and watch him carefully. He is very clever.”

With a cynical wave of his hand to Michael, he stepped from the room, closing the door after him.

“You have your orders,” Marie snapped to the Troopers. “Bind his arms.”

As the Nazi soldiers knotted a belt about his wrists, Michael nodded slowly to the girl. She turned away and removed his coat from her shoulders, tossed it over a chair.

“Do either of you have a cigarette?” she asked of the Storm Troopers.

Michael smiled faintly. The girl was acting her part admirably. This was obviously a trap by von Bock to see if she had been telling the truth. Probably the marshal was waiting cutside the door with a dozen men. If she made the slightest move to help him it would cost both their lives.

One of the soldiers offered her a cigarette and held a match until the tip was glowing brightly. She blew a cloud of blue smoke into the air and faced Michael, a cool smile curving her lips; but there was an anguish in her gray eyes that she could not conceal.

“So,” she said softly, “you thought you could fool the Gestapo indefinitely!”

Michael shrugged.

“We all make mistakes. I made one in forcing you to accompany me. Had I gone on alone I would probably have been successful.”

Michael hoped that von Bock heard that much.

“I—” The girl started to speak, but she stopped suddenly. A tense, startled expression spread over her white features.

The Storm Troopers noticed the sudden change.

“What is it?” one of them demanded. He raised his gun and glanced about the room with suspicious eyes.

Michael raised his head slightly. A fierce, exultant hope was pounding through his veins.

For he could hear distinctly a faint humming sound in the large office and from the corner of his eye he saw a shadowy shape moving toward the girl. She obviously had heard the sound and had recognized it as did Michael.

Paul Cheval, the one man to survive the horror of Lidice, was in the room, a grim phantom of vengeance and retribution!

This was one development that von Bock hadn’t planned when he had set this little trap.

“It is nothing,” the girl said quickly. “I–I’ve been through so much in the last few hours that my nerves are jumpy. I thought I saw the figure of a man on the other side of the room.”

Both Troopers turned in the direction she indicated and at that same instant the stocky, black-browed figure of Paul Cheval materialized beside the girl. With a swift rush he lunged at one of the soldiers, ripped the Luger from his hand. He shoved the man away from him and swung the gun to cover the second Trooper.

“Drop your gun!” he said. His voice was like thin ice cracking. There was no mistaking the chilling intention in his hot, black eyes.

The soldier dropped his gun to the floor with trembling fingers.

Marie stepped quickly to Michael’s side and went to work on the belt that was strapped about his wrists.

“Hurry!” Paul Cheval snapped.

He swung one Nazi about and brought the barrel of his gun down across the man’s temple. He sagged to the floor like a damp sack of oats. The other Trooper opened his mouth to cry out, but Paul rammed his gun, butt-deep into the man’s stomach.

“One squeak and you die,” he whispered.

The Nazi’s eyes circled in terror, whites gleaming, but his mouth clamped suddenly shut.

Michael felt his bonds giving, but before he could slip his wrists free, the door of the office burst open and von Bock strode into the room. He was alone, but he held an unwavering Luger in his hand.

He saw Paul and his face went blank with amazement.

Paul jerked his gun up, but von Bock fired first. The bullet slammed into Paul, knocking him about in a halfcircle. He fell slowly to the floor, his face a mask of agony. Blood stained his shirt and his face was an ashen gray. Desperately he tried to raise the gun in his hand, but it slipped from his nerveless fingers as he slumped to the floor.

Von Bock swung around to cover Marie.

“So!” he snapped harshly. “You were in with him!”

He strode across the room on his thick, stubby legs, flushed with anger.

“I caught you attempting to free him,” he said. “For that you will die with him, Fraulein”

Without taking his eyes from the girl, he signaled to the Trooper who was still on his feet.

“Drag the swine I shot from the room. I don’t like the smell of fresh blood.”

The Trooper put his hands under Paul’s shoulders and dragged him across the floor and out of the room, slamming the door after him.

“Now,” von Bock said harshly, “we will see, Fraulein, if your tricks will work on me. We have been altogether too lenient in dealing with enemies of the Reich. From now on, we shall be more firm.”

He shifted his gun to his left hand as he spoke. Then he stepped forward and slapped the girl savagely across the cheek.

“That, Fraulein, is only the start.”

“You inhuman beast!” the girl cried.

Michael said nothing, but his face was set and pale. He was working desperately at his bonds. The girl had loosened them, but not enough to free his wrists. If only he had time...

Von Bock sauntered slowly over to him. His thick lips were smiling grimly.

“You have made quite a fool of me, Herr Faber,” he said. “My superiors are going to wonder how you were able to deceive me for over two years. It is possible that I may be demoted because of you. You were very clever. Many times you must have been laughing at me, Herr Faber.”

His face clouded suddenly with bitter rage and the veins at his temples throbbed visibly.

“Didn’t you laugh, Herr Faber?” he shouted, his voice hoarse and ragged.

Michael smiled and shook his head.

“I never laughed at you, Herr Marshal,” he said. “But many times I pitied you.”

“Pity!” Von Bock’s voice shook with insane rage.

He drove his right fist suddenly into Michael’s face. The unexpectedness, rather than the force of the blow staggered him and he slumped to his knees. Blood streamed from his lip.

But as he fell he strained desperately at the belt about his wrists and he felt it give slightly. On his knees before von Bock he slipped one hand free. As his other hand came loose he dropped his head to his chest to hide the elated expression on his face.

“That is a fitting posture for you,” von Bock snarled. “On your knees, head bowed before the Herrenvolk!”

He raised his booted foot, but as he kicked at Michael’s face, Michael shifted slightly and von Bock’s leg shot across his shoulder. Michael ducked swiftly and his hands shot out, grabbing the marshal’s other leg.

A savage jerk brought the German’s portly figure crashing to the floor. Michael lunged for von Bock’s gun hand, but the Luger had dropped to the floor in the fall. The marshal squirmed on top of Michael and dug his thumbs into his eyes.

“You dog!” he cried. “I’ll tear your eyes—”

A shot sounded. And the marshal’s voice faded into a cracked, choking bleat. He rolled off Michael’s body and his short legs pumped wildly, spasmodically for an instant and then they were still.

Michael climbed weakly to his feet.

Marie held the marshal’s Luger, and a wisp of smoke was trailing from the muzzle of the gun. She brushed a lock of hair from her white forehead and leaned limply against the desk.

“I shot him in the back,” she said dully.

Michael took her shoulders and shook her gently.

“Forget that,” he said quietly. “Never think of it. It was simply something you had to do. Now pull yourself together. We’ve got a million-to-one chance to get out of here, but we can’t waste a second.”

He dropped to his knees beside von Bock’s body and transferred the vital roll of film to his own pocket.

Then he led the girl to the door and opened it cautiously. The corridor was deserted. Michael’s chief worry was the Storm Trooper who had carried out Paul’s body. He should be back on the scene any minute.

“Come on,” he said. “This is our only chance.”

He closed the door and, with Marie at his side, strode down the long carpeted corridor to the double brass doors that led to the street. His heart was hammering in his throat.

Opening the door boldly, he stepped out into the cool gray dawn. Instantly two guards confronted him. One of them was the florid-faced soldier who had originally let them in.

Michael nodded casually to him and gave his arm to Marie.

“Glad to see you’re on the alert,” he said, smiling.

The guard made no move to let them pass.

“I heard two shots from inside,” he said. “The marshal instructed me to let no one into the building after he went in.”

“Quite right,” Michael said. “Important things have transpired here tonight. Do you realize the Heydrich slayer was here tonight?”

“No!” the guard gasped. He looked nervously about.

“He is dead now,” Michael said. “Our courageous marshal dispatched him himself. I am carrying the message to Himmler.”

He patted the guard on the shoulder. “You have done your work well. I have already mentioned your alertness to von Bock. Now keep up the good work. Let no one in or out until I return. Do you understand?”

“Yes. But what did the Marshal von Bock say about me?”

Michael smiled at the guard.

“You know how he is. He’s not saying much at all these days.”

The guard looked bewildered for a while, but then an uncertain smile broke over his frown.

“Yes, that’s right. He doesn’t say much these days.”

“He is practically silent,” Michael said.

The guard laughed hugely without knowing why.

Marie said quietly, “We must hurry.”

“Yes,” Michael said, “we mustn’t keep Himmler waiting.”

He pointed to a black military car parked at the curb a half block from the building.

“Is that the marshal’s car?”

Still smiling, the guard nodded. “Thank you,” Michael said. Holding Marie’s arm, he descended the short flight of steps to the sidewalk and walked toward the marshal’s parked car.

“Steady,” he whispered gently to the girl. “Don’t walk too fast.”

The girl’s hand tightened in his as she forced herself to match his casual stride. When they reached the car Michael opened the door and helped Marie into the front seat.”

“I’ll drive,” he said. He glanced up at the light-tinged horizon thoughtfully. “We are still in time,” he whispered. “The plane will wait another hour.”

He stepped around to the other side of the car and opened the door. But as he was about to slide under the wheel he happened to glance at the sidewalk and he saw several fresh drops of blood gleaming in the early morning light.

The trail of drops led from an alleyway that flanked the Central Intelligence building to the middle of the sidewalk. And there the trail stopped.

Frowning, he stared at the drops of gleaming blood.

Suddenly he tensed and a strange chill shot through his body.

Another drop had fallen to the sidewalk — closer than the last!

And a voice whispered, “Michael!”

Michael strained his eyes and he saw the faint suggestion of a human shadow standing on the sidewalk. And as he watched another ruby-red drop of blood spattered at his feet.

“Paul!” he gasped. “How—”

“I am not dead. Von Bock’s bullet went through my shoulder. Did you get him?”

“Yes. But, Paul, you’re hurt.”

“Not too badly. I shall live for awhile yet. I have one more job to do.” The voice was a weak, ghostly whisper, but there was an undercurrent of determination in those tones that was as definite as Death itself.

“Go!” Paul said. “Already you have delayed too long.”

Michael felt a soft hand on his shoulder for an instant, then it was gone.

“Until we meet again,” Paul’s whisper came faintly to him.

“Paul!” Michael said desperately. “Where are you going?”

The reply came back, soft as a sibilant breeze, but its implications were as definite as a roaring storm. “Berchtesgaden!”

Michael heard the faint word and his lean face softened. An ironic smile curved his lips and he raised his hand in a gesture that was at once a salute and a farewell.

“Until we meet again, Paul Cheval,” he said.

There was no answer.

Michael slid under the wheel and the powerful car roared away from the curve...

Far above the tragic, hate-ruined continent of Europe, screened by banks of drifting clouds, a black unmarked plane streaked northward toward the Isle of Britain.

Michael Faber looked down at the land far below him and his arm tightened about Marie Kahn’s shoulder.

Tink Takes a Hand

First published in Fantastic Adventures, October 1941.

The argument started on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway on a very hot morning in late August. Like many intense arguments it was precipitated by a chance remark.

Tinkle and Nastee were sprawled on top of the broad shoulders of the redfaced Irish cop who directed traffic at the intersection. They were sunning themselves lazily, paying little attention to the surging crowds and noisy trucks and cars.

Of course the Irish cop didn’t know that his shoulders were serving as a resting place for Tink and Nastee. In fact he didn’t even see them.

For Tink and Nastee were Leprechauns, not quite the size of the Irish copper’s index finger and quite invisible to human eyes. Forty-second Street was a favorite spot for them. They liked the noise and the bustle and the never-ending crowds of people. Practically every morning they climbed onto the top of a refuse can or the copper’s shoulders and basked contentedly in the warm sun and the exciting street noises.

On this particular morning, the morning the argument started, Nastee turned on his side grumpily and said, “I feel miserable. I feel terrible. Usually I can stand the sight of all these cheerful looking people going to work, but today it has got me down. I feel acutely, horribly unhappy.”

Tinkle — Tink for short — chuckled. His laughter was a merry gusty bubble of gayety that tickled the Irish copper’s ear.

“What’s wrong with cheerful people?” he asked. “I like ’em. They make me feel fine, too. That’s why I do what I can to make people happier. If you’d try that occasionally you’d feel the same way I do.”

“Bah!” Nastee snorted. “I feel like a king when I’m making people unhappy. That’s the only fun I get out of life these days.”

“That’s why you have such little fun,” Tink replied. “It’s a hard job making people unhappy, because they’ve got too much sense to make themselves unhappy over unimportant things. I’ll bet you couldn’t get anyone in trouble if you tried.”

“What?” Nastee cried eagerly. “You think I can’t mess people up and make them unhappy any more?”

“Well,” Tink hedged uneasily. “I didn’t mean exactly that. But I will say it’s easier to make people happy than it is to make them unhappy.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Nastee said sourly. “If I want to cause trouble it’s the simplest thing in the world. And nobody can stop me either.”

“Causing trouble may be simple,” Tink said, “when you don’t have any opposition. But did you ever stop to think of what would happen if someone decided to spike your guns? Stopped your mischief before it did any harm?” Nastee peered at Tink through his narrow little eyes.

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” he said flatly.

“I think it would,” Tink said, just as flatly.

“Hummph,” Nastee grunted.

“I say I think it would,” Tink persisted. “In fact I’m willing to bet that if I had anything to say about the matter you wouldn’t get to first base with your trouble making.”

Nastee indulged in one of his rare, mirthless laughs.

“You’re pretty cocky this morning, aren’t you?” he said derisively. “If you’re challenging me, you’re on. We’ll pick out one of these people going by here and make a real contest out of it. Just to show you how little worried I am, I’ll let you have the first chance at whoever we pick.”

“How long do we keep it up?” Tink asked gleefully.

“As long as you want,” Nastee said sourly.

“Make it midnight tonight,” Tink decided. “We’ll both do what we can until then. At the stroke of twelve we both quit and decide who wins. All right?”

“Okay,” Nastee agreed. “Now let’s pick the victim.”

For several minutes they eyed the swollen parade of people surging past the intersection, unable to make up their minds. Finally, however, Tink jumped to his feet and pointed to a tall, dark-haired young man standing indecisively on the curb.

“He looks interesting,” he chirped. “Is he okay with you?”

Nastee surveyed the young man with a jaundiced eye. Finally he grunted and nodded his head.

“Okay,” he muttered.

“Let’s go then,” Tink cried. “Don’t forget I try my hand first on him.”

With eyes dancing with merry excitement, Tink ran down the brass buttons on the officer’s coat and leaped to the street in a graceful bound.

Jonathon Blake stood on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway wrestling with a rather interesting problem. He was trying to decide whether he should spend his last dollar and then leap into the Hudson River, or just step in front of a truck now and be done with it.

He was a tall, dark-haired young man, and his serge suit could have doubled for a mirror any time, any place. He was a playwright. Ordinarily playwrights do not spend their time contemplating self-extinction. Only hungry playwrights who have been forcibly ejected from every manager’s office on Broadway are subject to this peculiar form of mental doldrums.

Jonathon fitted into this last group and that was reason enough, it seemed to him, for stepping recklessly into the street into the path of a huge, rumbling van.

He actually did it without thinking? One instant he was pondering the problem and the next split second he was waiting for the inevitable and crushing impact of the heavy truck.

A horrible tortured squeal tore from brake drums and the truck came to a shuddering, jerky stop, bumper grazing the leg of Jonathon’s trousers. It was a miraculous, almost incredible escape, and the milling pedestrians were breathlessly horrified.

Jonathon struggled through them as swiftly as he could and hurried down the street. Just his luck, he decided miserably. Couldn’t even do a decent job of committing suicide. Every other bloke could, if he wanted, dispatch himself with neatness and vigor, but not Jonathon Blake. He strode dejectedly along, completely unaware of the two Leprechauns perched on his shoulder.

“First blood,” Tink said jubilantly to the glowering Nastee. “I saved him from the truck. Now let’s see what you can do.”

“You’ll see,” Nastee promised grimly.

At Forty-first street Jonathon decided to have a cup of coffee. He might as well spend his dollar, he realized, before jumping into the river. He was no hoarder.

He entered a smart restaurant, catering to the show business crowd, and slumped into a seat next to a young girl. He didn’t bother to look at her, just mumbled his order to the waitress and continued to think his gloomy thoughts.

When the coffee arrived, he reached for the cup, but before he could touch it, something jigged his elbow and the cup tipped its contents into the lap of the girl seated next to him.

She cried out instinctively, and then they were both on their feet and he was trying vainly to mop up the mess with his handkerchief. The waitress and the manager hurried over and Jonathon felt like an awkward, clumsy oaf, with ten thumbs.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said miserably, dabbing ineffectually at her skirt with his handkerchief. “Awfully clumsy of me.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” the girl said frostily.

Jonathan took a good look at her then for the first time. The top of her smooth blonde head came up just even with his shoulder, and she was put together very neatly, with just the right curves in the right places. Her large blue eyes were frosted with anger now and there were twin spots of color in the creamy white of her cheeks.

Jonathon felt his spirits lifting at the sight of this girl. Suddenly it seemed awfully important that she didn’t think him an impossible clown.

“Please,” he said humbly, “I know I don’t deserve it but won’t you smile just once so I’ll know you’re not too angry with me.”

The girl hesitated for an instant, and then she noticed Jonathon’s clean, dark, good looks and wide shoulders. She smiled then. Not a big smile but just enough to let Jonathon know she wasn’t really mad.

He sat down next to her feeling very happy and very reckless.

“Since I’ve messed up things so terribly,” he said, “won’t you let me buy breakfast?” He slipped his hand covertly into his pocket and reassured himself that the dollar was still there.

For a fraction of a second the girl deliberated. Then she smiled, a big smile this time.

“I think that would be very nice,” she said gaily.

Breakfast while it lasted, was one of the most delightful meals he had ever eaten. They talked of everything and anything and time slipped by rapidly. Finally the girl glanced at her watch and sighed regretfully. Jonathon called for a check and reached for his dollar bill. It wasn’t in the pocket he thought it was. He tried his other side pocket. It wasn’t there. Something like panic crawled into his throat and stuck there.

Hurriedly he went through his other pockets. His vest, even his watch pocket he turned inside out. A cold clammy sweat broke out on his brow. What would she think? Naturally, that he was just some cheap cadger who was trying to sponge her for a meal. Or else just a blustering fourflusher. His heart began to pound against his ribs like a frightened bullfrog.

Tink and Nastee were sitting on the edge of the counter, swinging their legs.

“That’s two in a row for you,” Tink said. “First you knocked the cup over and now you’ve stolen his money.”

Nastee grunted.

“The spilled coffee didn’t work like it should have. I’ll bet you had something to do with the way they got together so nice and chummy. She won’t think much of him when he has to ask her to pay the check though.”

Jonathon mopped his forehead nervously with his handkerchief.

“Is there anything wrong?” the girl asked quietly. There was the barest trace of frigidity in her voice.

“No, no,” Jonathon lied. “Everything’s just fine.”

He picked up the check and stood up.

The walk to the cashier’s desk was like the Last Mile. He thought desperately of dropping to the floor, and feigning unconsciousness or illness. But he didn’t. He walked on like a zombie or a man going to a dentist. At the desk he fumbled uncertainly with the check until the cashier reached out and plucked it from his nerveless fingers.

This was the end. As he waited for her to total the check, he thought bitterly of what he would do if he ever caught the pickpocket who had lifted his dollar.

The ringing of the cash register disrupted his murderous reverie. It didn’t just ring once as the sale was recorded. It rang steadily and clangingly like a fire alarm. Jonathon looked at the girl anxiously.

She was smiling cheerfully as if it was nothing unusual for a well-behaved cash register to suddenly go off like an alarm clock.

“What’s the matter?” he asked stupidly.

“Nothing,” the girl answered, with a bright smile. She shoved his check back to him. It was stamped with a big gold star.

“You’re the one-hundred-thousandth customer this year,” she explained. “The meal is on us. Congratulations.”

Jonathon felt a flood of sheer relief course through his body. His knees were filling with water and his head was getting light and dizzy. Luck like this was incredulous.

“Saved by the bell,” he said fervently.

He turned and joined the girl who was waiting at the door. Now he could ask her name, ask her to let him see her again. Dizzying, delightful thoughts were churning through his head. He was going to lick this writing game, he knew. He also knew that when that happened he’d probably have a certain important question to ask this girl. That, he decided fleeingly, was the silliest thought of all. See a girl for a half hour and decide you’re in love with her. Those things just didn’t happen.

He took her by the arm and they went outside.

Tink was dancing gleefully on Jonathon’s shoulder.[8]

“Pretty neat,” he chortled. “Pretty neat, wasn’t it?”

Nastee barely grunted.

“You mean fixing that cash machine, I suppose,” he said sulkily. He turned over and scowled. “I’m getting mad now.”

“Do you think,” Jonathon said to the girl when they reached the street, “that I’d be awfully out of place in asking you to let me see you again.”

The girl smiled up at him.

“You don’t even know my name,” she said, “and yet you’re anxious to see me again?”

“I know all I need to,” Jonathon said seriously.

The girl’s reply was completely obliterated by the sudden squealing of protesting brakes. A heavy truck had stopped suddenly before them blocking the traffic. Behind the truck a long sleek Cadillac honked its patrician horn impatiently.

Finally the owner of the Cadillac, a short, dynamic looking, florid fellow dressed in extremely loud sport clothes climbed wrath fully from the back seat of his car.

“I’ll get a cab,” he shouted angrily. “My time is my money and I am not a spendthrift. There ought to be a law against trucks anyway.”

The man strode to the sidewalk and Jonathon, getting his first good look at him, felt his knees go suddenly weak. For this multi-colored, bellowing specimen of humanity was Max Swart, the biggest theatrical producer in the country. Jonathon had seen him before on several occasions as the fabled producer had swept past him in the outer reception rooms of his office and disappeared into the huge double doors that barricaded his own inner sanctum.

A nod of approval from Max Swart had made many of the biggest men and women in show business. But, needless to say, Max Swart did not make a habit of nodding at just anyone.

Jonathan watched him breathlessly as a very small boy might watch Babe Ruth or Jack Dempsey. The Great Man was walking toward them, he would pass right by them — but no!

Jonathon almost fainted as Max Swart suddenly halted in his tracks, a big smile of welcome and recognition spreading over his face. Hands outstretched, the producer strode toward him eagerly. Jonathon knew his big chance had somehow miraculously arrived. It was possible that Max Swart remembered him from seeing him in his outer office, and now wanted to talk about one of the plays that he had written. Maybe he needed something for an immediate production, something like — Jonathon’s dream train was derailed abruptly as the producer strode past him to the girl with whom he had breakfasted.

“Lola, Lola,” he cried enthusiastically. “It’s absolutely glorious to see you again. I have a play for you. Such a play, such a play, darling, as you have never read. There is not a second to lose. We’ll go right to my office at once.”

Jonathon felt as if a mule had kicked him in the stomach. He recognized the girl now. Lola Langtry, one of the year’s sensational finds. God! What a chump he’d been. Buying her breakfast, making plans about her like any adolescent sophomore.

She turned to him.

“Please understand, I have to leave now.” She seemed to be waiting for him to say something but he remained silent.

“Come on!” Max Swart shouted. “My car is waiting.” He shot a glance at Jonathon and then dragged Lola away by the arm. “Watch out who you talk to in this town,” Jonathon heard him say as he helped the actress into the car.

A second later gears meshed, and the long car shot away, a sleek shining symbol of money and power.

Tink shifted uneasily on Jonathon’s shoulder and glanced at Nastee with new respect in his eye.

“Did you know that her big shot producer was coming along then?” he asked suspiciously. “If you did you’re getting pretty good.”

Nastee shrugged complacently.

“I’m pretty good all right,” he smirked.

Jonathon stared after the powerful car bitterly. That was the way his luck ran. Get interested in a girl, build up a lot of silly ideas and then find out she’s a top notch actress, sought after by famous producers, while he didn’t have two coins to rub together. He’d never see her again, he knew. He didn’t have any reason to. He jammed his hands into his pockets and started to move along, when a voice stopped him.

“Hey, Mister, your girl dropped this!”

Jonathon turned and saw one of the bus boys from the restaurant hurrying toward him. He held a small diamond clip in his hand.

“Found it under the stool where she was sitting,” he explained importantly.

Jonathon closed his hand over the beautiful little clip and a smile touched his face. He’d see her once again anyway, if only to return the brooch.

Tink executed a little jig on the top of Jonathon’s ear.

“He’ll see her again,” he said slyly to Nastee, “because I took the brooch from her pocketbook and planted it under the stool. It’s not twelve o’clock yet, remember. A lot can happen to our friend here.”

“A lot is going to happen,” Nastee promised grimly.

Jonathan felt a growing elation about seeing Lola again. He was not deluding himself that he had a chance for her affections, but at least he could see her, say goodbye.

He phoned the Max Swart office at the first drug store, but the secretary told him Mr. Swart and Miss Langtry would not be in for several hours. Mr. Swart had phoned to that effect. Jonathon hung up and went for a walk in the park for two hours. He thought about winning the Pulitzer prize and Lola all in one swoop.

“Dreaming while wide awake,” he muttered. “It’s easy to do.”

At the end of two hours he left the park and headed uptown for the offices of the Swart Production Agency. He was within two blocks of the building when it happened. Two detectives in plainclothes stepped alongside him and grabbed him by the arm.

“Take it easy,” one of them said. “You won’t get hurt.”

The other ran his hands swiftly through Jonathon’s pockets. His hand came out holding the slim diamond brooch.

“Where’d ya get this, chum?” he asked.

Jonathon swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry.

“M — Miss Lola Langtry lost it and I was returning it to her,” he said.

“That’s good,” one of the men said. “Real original story you got there. She lost it and you’re just returning it. Well you’d better get a prettier tune than that to sing to the judge. You’ll need it.”

“Now just a minute,” Jonathon said angrily. “You fellows are jumping to conclusions. Why don’t you get in touch with Miss Langtry and see what she has to say?”

“We don’t have to. She got in touch with us. Sent out the alarm with your description over an hour ago. Come on—”

Tink and Nastee were climbing up and down the bars of Jonathon’s cell some hours later. Jonathon was slumped on the cot, his head buried in his hands, his shoulders slumped despairingly.

Tink looked worried.

“Time’s passing,” Nastee reminded him for the third time. “I got him sewed up now and there isn’t much you can do.”

“I wish I knew how you framed him for that theft,” Tink said suspiciously. “You probably used the old hackneyed trick of whispering to the girl and making her believe she’s figuring everything out for herself.

“It may be old,” Nastee said smugly, “but these humans have gone for it so long now that there’s no reason to change. They call it association of ideas or mental telepathy. Anyway that doesn’t alter the fact that you’re behind the eight ball and so is he. I’m waiting to see you get out of it.”

Tink sighed.

“He’s the one to worry about. Not me.”

It was about a half-hour after that when the reporters arrived. A jewel theft was always good news, but when it had a tie-in with the season’s most glamorous ingénue, it became really hot.

They fired a thousand questions at him through the bars:

“Are you in love with Lola Langtry?”

“Were you working alone on the job?”

“Did she scream when you jerked the brooch from her?”

Jonathon answered the questions patiently, as carefully as he could. Finally they trooped off. That is, all but one. A lean gray news hound whom Jonathon had seen a few times before about town stuck behind.

“My name is Lafferty,” he said. “You’ve done some writing haven’t you? Play or something wasn’t it?” Jonathon nodded, pleased in spite of himself that anyone should know of that.

“You aren’t the guilty party in this thing are you?” Lafferty asked casually.

“No,” Jonathon said wearily. “I’m not. But nobody listens to me.”

“They will,” Lafferty said. “This little masquerade is about over.” Nastee watched the reporter leave with a troubled look in his eye.

“Something’s up, Tink,” he said positively. “What do you know about it?”

Tink swung gracefully from one bar to another like a trapeze artist.

“You’ll see,” he said coyly, “you’ll see.”

The day dragged by and night settled over the city. At eleven o’clock the warden opened the door to Jonathon’s cell.

“Your bail has just been taken care of,” he said.

“By whom?” Jonathon asked.

“Max Swart. He also wants to see you as soon as you can make it from here to his place. He sent his car here and it’s waiting for you.”

Jonathon left in such a hurry that Tink and Nastee barely had time to rub the sleep out of their eyes and leap to their accustomed spot on his shoulder. On the trip through the city in Max Swart’s smooth car Jonathon racked his brain for an answer to the puzzle of Max Swart’s interest in him. But nothing he arrived at made sense so he gave up.

When he reached the duplex apartment where Swart lived he was whisked to the penthouse in a waiting elevator and led into the Swart apartment by an obsequious butler. Through heavily carpeted corridors and finally to the library. The butler threw wide the double doors of oak and Jonathon was on his own.

Seated behind a huge desk in the center of the room was Max Swart. Jonathon entered the room and saw that Lola was seated in an overstuffed chair in the corner and Lafferty, the news-hound, was leaning against the wall.

“My boy,” Max cried jovially, “Welcome to the shack.”

“Lemme talk,” Lafferty said bluntly. “Something stinks about this whole deal and that’s why I got you together. In the first place Swart I think the robbery was phoney, a press agent’s gag. This lad didn’t take the brooch, in fact nobody took it, but you wanted the public to think this particular person did take it.”

Swart shrugged good-naturedly.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because this young guy is a playwright. You figure that if the public gets interested in this guy as a thief, it’ll be good publicity when you buy a play from him and star Lola Langtry in it, the gal whom he robbed.”

Swart stood up and rubbed his hands excitedly. He paced back and forth behind his desk like an overweight panther.

“It’s terrific!” he cried suddenly. “It’s got everything. We’ll do it. What do we care if he’s a thief? All writers are anyway. Instead of jewels he can steal scenes and dialogue from now on, only its respectable.”

“I’m not a jewel thief,” Jonathon snapped irritably.

Lafferty swallowed incredulously. “You mean you didn’t have this cooked up already?” he demanded of Swart.

“No,” Swart said expansively, “We missed a bet on that, but thanks to you we can capitalize on the publicity yet. We’ll all make barrels of money,” he paused and glanced meaningly at Lafferty. “You understand, of course, that I mean we will all make barrels of money.”

Lafferty nodded and smiled.

“I get you. I’ll forget all about tonight and pretend I was bowling instead.”

Swart picked up Lola’s diamond brooch from his desk and walked to the mantle and placed it in a wall safe.

“Then the whole thing’s settled,” he boomed. “Even to keeping the diamond brooch that started the whole business here in my wall safe tonight.”

“Mr. Swart,” Jonathon said, “if you want me to write plays for you — fine. About working with Miss Langtry though I can’t say. That’s up to her.”

Max Swart looked at Lola and saw the delightful blush which stained her cheeks and the shy smile that fluttered over her lips.

“I think everything will be all right on that angle,” he said drily.

Tink did a little jig step and slapped Nastee on the back almost knocking him over.

“I win,” he chortled. “I win. Everything’s perfectly happy. The guy got out of jail and got a job, and unless I’m way wrong he’ll get the girl too.”

“I’ve still got five minutes,” Nastee snarled peevishly. “My time isn’t up and I’ve got an idea that’ll put him right back where he started. I’m going to cop the brooch again and plant it on him. When they find it a second time, he’ll be through for good.”

“You’re repeating yourself, you know,” Tink said scornfully.

“There’s no law against that,” Nastee retorted.

He ran across the floor and up the wall. Tink followed him dolefully. He saw Nastee walk across the mantle and climb into the interior of the wall safe. Then he chuckled.

Stepping across the floor, he slammed the door to the wall safe and twirled the combination handle.

Tink’s mouth was parted in a wide grin. That’d hold Nastee.

He crawled up and took a seat before the wall safe. He’d let him out after midnight, but not a second before.

Nastee would be furious at being tricked but it was his own fault. Tink could picture him now, red-faced and impotent, tramping up and down inside the safe, probably swearing like a trooper. He wouldn’t be fit to live with for weeks after he let him out.

Tink didn’t care. He looked down at the happiness he had created and his tiny, tinkling laugh bubbled from his throat, contented and happy.

Lola looked up at Jonathon and smiled at him.

“Funny,” she said, “but I thought I heard someone laugh.”

“It was probably my heart,” Jonathon said.

Tink Takes a Fling

First published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1942.

Central Park was alive with the first touch of spring. A soft balmy breeze skipped gaily through the green shrubbery and the sun that splashed extravagantly and gloriously over the wide lawns transformed the emerald heart of Manhattan into a beautiful fairyland.

A robin sang, leaves frisked over the gravelled walks and nature’s general air of happy contentment was reflected in the faces of the starry-eyed couples strolling through the park.

One of these couples sauntered slowly past a bubbling drinking fountain, completely unaware that they were the subject of a rather bitter argument.

“Disgusting!” Nastee said peevishly.

Tink glanced at the passing couple and sighed.

“It’s not disgusting,” he said dreamily, “it’s wonderful. They’re in love.”

“Bah!” Nastee said.

The couple in question strolled on, completely unaware that their rapturous state had started another of the arguments that went on interminably between Tink and Nastee, the city-dwelling Leprechauns.

The two tiny people were lying on the concrete rim of the bubbler looking lazily up at the sky when their eternal argument resumed. Now, Nastee swung himself to a sitting position and stared moodily at the glinting water that bubbled up from the fountain.

“Love,” he said. “Bah! It’s stupid and silly. I don’t like it.”

A man stopped and bent over for a drink and Nastee, knowing ordinary humans couldn’t see him, amused himself by kicking a spray of water into his eyes.

“Damn these crazy fountains!” the man snarled, groping for his handkerchief. Swearing eloquently he strode angrily away.

Tink closed his eyes and a dreamy smile touched his lips.

“Love is the most glorious thing in the world,” he said.

Nastee looked at him exasperatedly.

“Stop saying that over and over again,” he said. “Anyway, how do you know?”

Nastee’s sharp eyes caught the sudden flush in Tink’s cheeks.

“I just know, that’s all,” Tink said defensively.

“So that’s it,” Nastee said with a sly grin. “You’ve fallen in love yourself.”

Tink reddened in confusion.

“Of course not. You’re being absolutely silly. How could I be in love? I’ve only seen her once.”

“Oho!” chortled Nastee. “Who is she?”

Tink sat up and put his chin in his hand. A worried frown was on his face.

“That’s just it,” he said, “I don’t know her name or anything about her. I just got a glimpse of her through a window while she was working.” He sighed tragically. “She’s glorious.”

Nastee’s curiosity got the better of him.

“What’s she like?” he asked. “What does she do?”

“Well,” Tink said eagerly, “she’s pretty as a rose and she works for a composer.”

“She must be smart,” Nastee said grudgingly.

“Naturally, she’s smart,” Tink said. “I could tell at a glance that she was the only one in the bunch with brains and beauty.”

“Bunch?” Nastee said in surprise. “Was it a harem?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Tink said frostily. “She is the end girl in a chord. There are three other girls assigned to this particular composition, but none of them compare with mine.”

“Mine!” Nastee jeered. “Do you think she’ll bother with you?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Tink said gloomily. “Anyway I’m going to see her again and try to talk with her.”

“When?” Nastee demanded.

“Right away,” he said.

“I think I’ll go along,” Nastee said. Tink stopped. “Oh, no you don’t.”

“You can’t stop me,” Nastee said. “There’s no wall safe here to lock me in like you did the last time. Anyway I’ll be good.”[9]

“Is that a promise?” Tink demanded. Nastee smiled slyly.

“Of course,” he said.

The young man at the piano was concentrating on his work with almost fierce intentness. A shock of unruly black hair fell over his pale forehead as his fingers pounded out dramatic, thunderous chords, but he only shook it from his eyes impatiently and continued playing.

Occasionally he stopped long enough to pencil in a few notes on the unfinished score before him, then his fingers returned to the keyboard to draw forth harmony and melody that swelled through the small, plainly furnished room with magic beauty.

Finally he stopped and ran both hands wearily through his untidy hair. His face was drawn with tiny lines of fatigue, but an unquenchable flame of inspiration burned in his eyes.

He was about to return to his work when a slim girl appeared in the doorway that led to the apartment’s tiny kitchen. She wore a brightly colored apron and there was a smudge of flour on her nose. Her smile was gay.

“Would New York’s finest composer care to stop for a cup of coffee?” she asked.

The young man at the piano grinned at her and stretched luxuriously.

“Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “I’m getting a bit tired. Will the wife of New York’s finest composer join me?”

“I certainly will,” the girl answered. “Come on.”

The young man sighed and his face became serious.

“Ann,” he said suddenly, “how do we know this music is any good? How do we know Mr. Hummert will use it for his revue even if I do finish it by Friday?”

The girl placed her hands on her hips in a comically belligerent pose and one small foot tapped the floor impatiently.

“Peter Hardwicke,” she said, “if you don’t stop doubting your own ability I’ll — well, I don’t know what I will do, but it will be something drastic. Of course your overture is good. Even though it isn’t finished yet I know that. And if Mr. Hummert doesn’t take it,” she added defiantly, “why someone else will.”

“Hummert has to take it,” the young composer said, almost savagely. “Don’t you realize honey, this is our big chance. If I muff it I may never get another.”

“You are not going to muff it,” his wife said crisply, “so stop thinking about it. Now come into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. The rest will do you good.”

The young man stood up and put his arms around her.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said huskily.

“I do,” she said. “You’d never get a decent cup of coffee.

He smiled at her and rumpled her short auburn hair.

“Don’t get fresh with New York’s finest composer.”

They both laughed then and walked into the kitchen, arm-in-arm.

When Peter Hardwicke returned to his work a few moments later, he noticed that a draft of air was blowing through the room. Glancing about he saw that the window facing Central Park was open about an inch at the bottom.

He was sure that it had been closed when he left the room, but it was definitely open now. Frowning over this minor mystery he stepped to the window and closed it, unaware that his action almost occasioned a major disaster in the plans of Tink and Nastee.

“Whew!” Tink cried. “That was close. He almost caught the seat of my pants when he slammed the window.”

“It would have served you right,” Nastee said, “for being so poky.”

Tink climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. His merry face was beaming with expectancy.

“Anyway we’re inside,” he said.

Peter Hardwicke had returned to his piano and again his flying fingers were scattering brilliant melody about the room. His back was to the window, concealing the keyboard from Tink and Nastee.

“All right,” Nastee said sourly, “we’re inside. Now, where’s this girl you’re mooning about?”

Tink executed a little jig.

“Follow me,” he said.

Leaping from the sill he caught a lamp cord and swung himself up to the piano. Nastee joined him an instant later.

From this point of view they had a clear view of the piano keyboard. Tink stretched himself on his stomach with a contented sigh and cupped his chin in his hand, but Nastee’s mouth fell open in surprise.

For visible to him on the keyboard were four beautiful, gracefully moulded girls, dancing with elfin delicacy over the piano keys and leaping lightly as feathers over the flashing fingers of the composer.[10]

They were clad in wisps of flowered material that billowed and floated around them as they soared from key to key with lithe abandon. Their every movement, every gesture was synchronized to the tempo of the music, and the gay festive mood of their dance was attuned to the spirited rhythm of the composition.

“Holy gee!” Nastee gasped. For once his surly sarcasm was forgotten. His metropolitan sophistication was staggered.

Tink grinned at him.

“They’re pretty keen, aren’t they? But notice the one on this end. She’s in a class by herself.”

Nastee glanced at the girl whose charms had captivated Tink and shook his head slowly and sadly.

“Red hair,” he said succinctly. “That’s bad.”

“What’s bad about that?” Tink demanded. “I like red hair.”

Nastee sat down and swung his legs over the side of the piano. Now that his first interest in the dancing girls had worn away, his normally irascible attitude was returning.

“Too much temper,” he said. “She’s probably the type who’d throw acorns at you when she got mad.”

“You’re crazy,” Tink said with heat. With injured dignity he turned away from Nastee and then his cheeks flamed with humiliation. For evidently the sound of the altercation had carried to the dancing girls on the keyboard.

All four of them were regarding him with wide startled eyes. In their surprised consternation they lost the tempo of the music and huddled together whispering animatedly and peeking occasionally at Tink and Nastee.

The melody pouring from the piano became perceptively ragged. Peter Hardwicke brought his hand down in a desperate savage chord and then ran his fingers distractedly through his hair.

“Damn!” he muttered. “That doesn’t sound right at all.” He wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers and began playing again, repeating the passage that had broken down.

The elfin girls had recovered from their shock by this time. Responding to the music they came to life in a brilliantly spirited dance that was as lilting as a leaf in a breeze.

Once again the music was sweet and melodious and graceful.

The red haired girl flitted down the keyboard and twirled about in perfect time before Tink.

“It isn’t at all polite to stare at people,” she said over her shoulder.

“It’s not polite, but it’s fun,” Tink said. “What’s your name?”

The girl tossed her head saucily.

“What difference does it make to you?” She started to dance away.

“Wait a minute!” Tink cried. “I’ve got to know your name if you’re going to spend the afternoon in the park with me.”

Twirling, the girl danced slowly back to Tink. Her delicately chiseled chin was grimly firm.

“Who said I was going to the park with you?” she demanded.

“It was just an idea,” Tink said uneasily.

“It wasn’t a good one,” the girl said.

“All right,” Tink shrugged resignedly, “we’ll stay here and get acquainted. It won’t hurt to tell me your name, will it?”

The girl glanced up into Tink’s cheerfully smiling face and she missed a beat.

“No, I guess not,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I’m Jingle.”

“Then I’ll call you Jing,” Tink said promptly.

The red haired girl dropped her eyes and smiled. Then she wheeled away and twirled toward the opposite end of the keyboard, but in her excited confusion her feet skipped another beat.

The music stopped with a heavy discouraged crash. The young composer stood up and clenched his fists nervously.

“Something’s off,” he muttered. “What a time to get snagged. I’ve got to get this thing right.”

His wife came into the room then and saw him standing drumming his fingers on the top of the piano. “What’s the matter, Peter?” she asked anxiously.

“I’ll be darned if I know,” he answered, with a weary shake of his head. “Everything was going beautifully until I stopped to have that coffee. Now I’m missing something. I should have worked straight through.”

His wife turned away. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said in a small voice.

“Oh, honey, it’s not your fault. It’s just a case of nerves. When I think of how important this thing is, I can’t concentrate on anything.”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Ann said. She held a handkerchief to her nose.

Peter crossed the room in two quick strides and took her in his arms. With one finger he lifted her chin until he was able to smile into her eyes. “Smile,” he said. “Please.”

She smiled tremulously.

“That’s better. Please don’t pay any attention to what I say, honey, when I’m all worked up like this. It’s my fault, I know, but I get tied up in a knot when the music isn’t coming right. Am I forgiven?”

With a sob, Ann buried her face against his tweed jacket.

“It was all my fault, Peter,” she cried, the words coming through his coat in an indistinct murmur.

Peter patted her shoulders awkwardly.

“Well, let’s don’t argue about that,” he said with a grin. “The big thing that Mr. and Mrs. Hardwicke have to do is get this overture set right. I’m going to knock off for ten or fifteen minutes and maybe I’ll have an inspiration when I get back to work.”

Tink took advantage of the interruption to make strides.

“Listen, Jing,” he said urgently, “you’ve no idea how beautiful the park is at this time of day. I can’t describe it to you, you’ve got to see it for yourself.”

“But I can’t,” Jing said, for the fifth time. She glanced apprehensively down the keyboard where her three companions were gossiping together in a tight little circle.

“They’re shocked enough as it is,” she said, “and besides I have to go to work when the music starts. There’s no one to take my place.”

Tink frowned and rested his chin in his hand. For fully a minute he remained thinking, then he leaped to his feet with a shout.

“I’ve got it,” he cried. “Nastee can take your place for a half hour or so. He catches on to things in a hurry.” Nastee who had been listening glumly to the discussion raised his head and stared at Tink with cynical amusement.

“What makes you think I will?” he sneered.

“Oh, he couldn’t,” Jing said hastily. “We’ve already caused enough trouble with the music this afternoon. We can’t mix things up anymore.”

“Nastee wouldn’t mix things up,” Tink said with fine assurance. “He has a very musical nature. Anyway, it will only be for a few minutes. Please.”

“Well—” Jing glanced timidly at her companions, “if it’s only for a few minutes—”

“Fine,” Tink cried. “Come on, Nastee, be a good sport.”

Nastee’s face was thoughtful, but sly lights lurked in his little eyes.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “I’m not such a bad guy, after all.”

“Wonderful!” Tink said gleefully. “You see, Jing, it’s all set.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Jing said, “it really isn’t right.” She glanced doubtfully at Nastee. “Will you do your best to follow the music? It isn’t terribly difficult.”

“Sure,” Nastee said. “I’ll do my best.”

After another second of hesitation, Jing flung her streaming hair back with a toss of her head and sprang lightly to the top of the piano beside Tink.

“All right,” she said, “but only for a little while.”

Hand-in-hand they leaped to the window cord and swung to the window. With a tinkling laugh they were gone.

When Peter returned to the piano a half hour later, he noticed that the window facing the Park was open again. He closed it automatically, too absorbed with his musical problems to worry about trifles.

He flexed his fingers nervously and drew a deep breath. Then he struck the opening chord of the overture. As the sound swelled up from the piano he jerked his hands away as if the keys were suddenly red-hot.

Shaken, he listened in horror to the hideously sour chord that lingered in the room like a bad odor. A feverish light of desperation gleamed in his eye.

Never had he produced music like this.

Summoning his courage he attacked the piano again, striving mightily to infuse his composition with melody and harmony, but each succeeding chord was more objectionable than the last.

Everything was wrong! The melody was sour, the rhythm was jerky, the harmony was a travesty, and the complete score seemed suddenly an uninspired hodge-podge of din, discord and dissonance.

“What’s got into it!” Peter cried, burying his face in his hands. “It’s horrible, it’s sour, it’s all wrong!”

In desperation he leaped to his feet and scooped up the sheets of music in his hands. Trembling in every muscle he glared at them as if they were directly responsible for his predicament.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “What’s the matter?”

Ann appeared in the doorway, her face white.

“Darling, what’s wrong? Is anything the matter?”

Peter clasped his fist to his forehead with a moan.

“Is anything the matter?” he shouted. “No, everything’s dandy! Everything’s fine!”

Waving the crumpled sheets of music over his head he strode to the middle of the room, his face flushed with helpless rage.

“It isn’t necessary to shout at me,” Ann said quietly. “Maybe you’d better lie down awhile. You’re upset.”

“That’s it,” Peter said breathing heavily, “I’m just upset. The whole damned score is a stinking mess and Hummert would have to be a mad man to think of using it, so I’m upset. That’s all, upset. I discover after eight years of work that I can’t write music that makes sense, so I’m upset. I’m not irritated, I’m not angry, I’m not going stark raving mad, I’m just a little bit upset. You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Please, Peter,” Ann said. Her lower lip trembled. “You’ve never talked like this to me before.”

“That,” Peter said in a strangled voice, “was because I was never upset before. Now, as you have pointed out so brilliantly, I’m upset. I’m liable to say anything.”

Ann stared at him wordlessly for an instant, then with a muffled sob she turned and ran into the tiny bedroom. She returned a moment later with her hat and coat on.

Peter looked at her and the color suddenly drained from his face.

“So you’re walking out,” he said bitterly. “All right, go ahead. You’re doing the smartest thing in the world. I’m not worth sticking to.”

With a sudden vicious gesture he tore the sheets of music in two and flung them into the air.

“There goes nothing,” he said. “Just the remains of the final flop effort of my illustrious career as a composer of rotten music.”

Ann looked at him steadily for an instant as if she were trying to memorize his features. Then she turned and left the room.

Peter glared helplessly after her and viciously kicked a torn sheet of music into the air. It settled quietly, forlornly to the carpet.

With an oath he grabbed a bottle of Scotch from a table and strode into the bedroom, kicking the door shut with an angry bang.

After an idyllic hour in the park, sunning themselves on a toadstool and chummily discussing life and its problems, Tink and Jing returned to the apartment.

The appalling scene that met their eyes completely shocked them from their complacently contented mood.

Torn sheets of music were strewn about the floor and over the entire apartment brooded a dismal silence.

The three chord girls were crouched in terror on top of the mantel clock, their eyes wide with fright. Nastee was stretched comfortably on the keys of the piano, his impish face adorned with a sly, mischievous smile.

“Oh!” Jing gasped faintly. “Something terrible has happened.”

Tink stared apprehensively at Nastee’s recumbent figure. There was something in his smirking, triumphant smile that caused him considerable uneasiness.

“Oh,” Jing wailed, “I knew I shouldn’t have left.”

Her three companions crouched together on top of the clock, and in fearful, drama-charged whispers, related all that had occurred while Tink and Jing had been away.

Jing turned white.

“Oh, this is terrible,” she whispered. Turning impulsively to Tink, she cried, “You must do something. You simply must!”

Tink patted her shoulder and glared accusingly at Nastee.

“You see the trouble you’ve caused,” he said.

“Sure,” Nastee said smugly. “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years. Boy!”

“Oh!” Jing cried. “Did you cause all this trouble on purpose?”

Nastee stretched luxuriously. He was enjoying himself thoroughly.

“Certainly,” he replied. “It wasn’t hard either. All I had to do was trip the girls when they’d dance past me. It sure played the devil with the music.”

“Oh,” Jing said faintly. The magnitude and callousness of Nastee’s prank left her breathless. She turned imploringly to Tink.

“What are you going to do?”

Tink scratched his head. What a fine mess!

“I’ll think of something,” he promised. But his voice was lacking its customary cheery assurance.

“You’ve got to,” Jing said frantically. “If this work isn’t finished on time it’ll be all my fault. I’ll never be given another chance.”

She buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

Tink shifted uneasily from one foot to another, appalled by this emotional outburst.

“All right, I’ll do something,” he said.

He sat down and screwed his forehead into a frown. This situation was a lulu. He racked his brain for several minutes before he reached two conclusions. The composition would never be finished unless the composer was prompted to return to work. The composer would never return to work unless his wife returned to him, and domestic harmony was restored. Those two things were obvious. Therefore it only remained to get the composer and his wife back together.

That was all, but that was plenty!

He stood up and nervously chewed on a piece of thread. The first thing that had to be done was to prevent the composer’s wife from leaving the apartment house and disappearing into the trackless maze of Manhattan. If she got out of the immediate vicinity they might never be able to get her back on time.

He turned grimly to Nastee and pointed a determined finger at him.

“You’re going to stop the girl from leaving this building. She can’t have gotten out of the lobby yet. You’re responsible for this entire mess and I intend to see that you help undo some of the damage.”

Nastee grinned wickedly at him. “I’ll stop her,” he said, “but that don’t do any good. I’ve got things scrambled to the point where you can never straighten them out.”

With a satisfied chortle he swung himself down from the keyboard and scampered across the floor to the door.

“That’s the first step,” Tink said. He turned to Jing. “You get your girls together and pick up these torn sheets of music. Then find some glue and put it all back into shape.”

“All right,” Jing said, “but what are we going to do about the composer?”

“That,” said Tink, “is my job.” One of the girls from the clock said:

“He took a bottle of whisky with him to the bedroom.”

Tink looked nervously at the closed bedroom door, then he squared his shoulders.

“I’ll handle him, all right,” he said. Jing smiled tremulously at him.

“I know you will,” she said.

Tink wished that he shared her confidence. Intervening in the affairs of humans was ticklish enough, but when a quart of whisky had to be considered in his calculations, the situation assumed the precarious qualities of a juggled box of dynamite.

Drawing a deep breath he slid down the lamp to the floor and advanced toward the bedroom. Jing, on the window-sill, waved encouragement to him as he sallied forth to battle.

He entered the room by the simple expedient of rolling under the half inch crack provided by the slightly warped door. Inside he studied the scene carefully, and what he saw did not particularly encourage him.

The young composer was sprawled in a chair beside the bed with the bottle of Scotch within convenient reach. It was apparent from the opened bottle, and his flushed face that he was seeking the solace of Bacchus.

Tink sat down on the floor and cupped his chin in his hands. This situation required delicacy and tact. He studied the composer carefully and thoughtfully for several minutes.

It was evident from the young man’s face, he decided, that he regretted his actions, but his pride was preventing him from making the overtures that would effect a happy reconciliation. A bad thing, Tink thought gloomily. Finally he stood and climbed up the spread to the top of the bed. From there he leaped to the top of the dresser. A plan was already forming in his head.

Not particularly original, he realized, but still it was worth trying.

He scurried about the dresser top until he found what he was looking for, an ordinary hairpin. Hoisting it to his shoulders he sprang back to the bed and ran along the edge until he was within a foot of where the composer was sitting.

Then, using all his strength, he threw the hairpin into the air. It landed with a faint metallic plink! on the arm of the composer’s chair and bounced to the floor.

Startled, the composer looked around and then glanced down to the floor where the hairpin lay gleaming at his feet. He picked it up and stared at it. Then his fingers tightened on the pin crushing it out of shape. An expression of pain flitted over his features as he stared blankly, unseeingly at the pin in his hand.

Tink watched hopefully. Maybe that reminder of his wife would soften him up and melt away his stubborn pride.

For several seconds Peter Hardwicke tensed in his chair, then he slumped back and the pin fell from his hand to the floor. With that same hand he reached for the Scotch bottle.

Tink shook his head disconsolately. No soap.

He returned to the dresser top and began prowling around.

For several minutes he searched unavailingly. Then, next to a make-up box, he found an atomizer of perfume. He stared at the bulb and hose leading to the bottle and a smile curved his lips.

If anything would do the trick — this was it.

The bulb was taller than he, but after several attempts he managed to crawl onto its round, soft surface and balance himself there. This wasn’t going to be easy, he realized uneasily.

He waited until the jelly-like surface settled under his feet, then he leaped high in the air, jerking his knees under his chin. Descending, he kicked downward with all his might.

But something had happened to his timing. Instead of hitting the bulb flush, he struck its sloping side. The results of this change of procedure were just short of disastrous. Fortunately a jar of soft, filmy powder was next to the atomizer, and Tink’s surprised body bounced from the bulb into this cushioned receptacle.

The powder closed over his body in a billowing, cloying wave, burying him completely. When he struggled up, choking and gasping, he was thoroughly covered with white, persimmon-flavored talcum.

And Tink despised persimmon. In spite of this and his ignominious nosedive, he was not ready to admit defeat. Undaunted he emerged from the powder bowl and climbed to the top of the atomizer bulb.

He was, however, more careful this time. Instead of leaping into the air like a ballet dancer he contented himself with bouncing gently on the rubber surface of the bulb.

The results were less spectacular but more effective.

His light pressure on the bulb sprayed a thin, delicate stream of perfume into the air. The tiny globules of perfume hung in the air like motes on a hot day, then gradually drifted downward.

Peter Hardwicke raised his face suddenly from his hands and there was a wild, tormented look in his eyes. He stared desperately about the room.

“Good God!” he muttered. “I’m losing my mind. I thought she was standing beside me.”

Tink worked harder on the atomizer bulb, pumping the delicate aroma until it thoroughly permeated the room.

He’s weakening, he thought exultantly.

But Tink weakened before Peter Hardwicke did. Panting and limp, he was forced to cease his heroic efforts a few minutes later.

The young composer was still holding out. His hands were clenched before him and the knuckles were straining white, but he made no move to leave.

Tink regarded him disgustedly. Nothing seemed to avail against his steely stubbornness.

He felt a moment of panic as he realized how much was hanging in the balance. Jing was depending on him to straighten this thing out. What Nastee was doing, he had no idea. The thought of Nastee caused him to clench his fists bitterly. If he had known any real swear words he would have used them without hesitation.

But he couldn’t give up now. He tramped moodily about the dresser top until he was forced to the realization that he had exhausted its possibilities.

Then he explored the rest of the room. Finally he came to the closet. The door was slightly ajar and he inspected, without any great enthusiasm, the few miscellaneous garments hanging there.

They didn’t suggest anything to him so he climbed a bath robe rope to the upper regions of the closet where he saw two shelves.

On one shelf was a bottle of Scotch. Tink wrinkled his nose distastefully at it and continued upward. On the second shelf he made an important discovery. A loose cloth bag with wooden handles had been shoved back against the wall of the closet, obviously in an attempt to conceal its presence.

Tink looked inside the bag and he laughed out loud. His tinkling chuckle was, for the first time in an hour, completely carefree and joyous. For he knew his problems were over.

It would take a little manipulating but that was a minor matter. In fact it only took him two minutes to make the necessary preparations inside the closet.

Still, there was one job left that was rather ticklish. He had to discover some way to prompt the young composer to open the closet door.

But now that Tink was on the right track this obstacle seemed a simple matter. His confidence and assurance returned, bringing with them his characteristic ingenuity.

Popping out of the clothes closet he scampered under the bed and climbed quickly to the table top where the Scotch bottle was placed.

How to make the young man walk across the room and open the closet door? Tink thought he had it.

He waited patiently until the composer reached for the Scotch, then with all his strength shoved against the bottle.

The bottle swayed slightly, the composer’s hand missed the neck by a fraction of an inch and, with another shove from Tink, the bottle toppled from the table to the floor with a splintering crash.

“Damn!” Peter Hardwicke said disgustedly.

For a moment he stared broodingly at the bottle without moving a muscle, and Tink’s heart hammered despairingly.

Maybe it wouldn’t work after all!

A sigh of relief escaped his lips when the composer finally stood up and walked to the closet for another bottle of Scotch.

Everything was going to be okay now. Leaning comfortably against the Scotch shot glass, Tink waited happily for developments. A cheerful, expectant smile was on his lips.

Wouldn’t Jing be proud of him!

Nastee felt little enthusiasm for the scene he was witnessing. Mrs. Ann Hardwicke was checking out at the apartment desk and he was finding the whole thing a trifle boring.

“I’ll send someone for my things,” Mrs. Ann Hardwicke was saying to the desk clerk.

The young clerk was discreetly curious.

“Naturally, we’re sorry you’re leaving,” he said. “Has the service been satisfactory?”

“It’s not that,” Ann said. “It’s — something else.”

Her voice was miserable.

Nastee leaned against an ink-well on the desk and yawned. Tink had told him to stop this girl from leaving, but why should he? Tink was getting too high and mighty lately. This would show him he wasn’t so clever.

At that moment a heavy set, florid faced man bustled up to the desk. He was well dressed and had the nervous air of impatience that stamps self-important people.

“Boy!” he snapped to the desk clerk, “I’m in a hurry.”

He pulled out a heavily stuffed wallet and laid it on the desk while he fished in his vest pocket for a pen.

The wallet lay on the desk, almost touching Ann’s open purse. Nastee looked at the two objects for an instant with contemplative eyes. Then he chuckled mischievously. A golden opportunity!

Ann thanked the clerk for his kindness and walked away, trying desperately to hold back the tears.

She was half way across the lobby when she heard an angry bellow behind her. Turning she saw a fat, important looking man striding toward her, waving his arms excitedly.

The man caught her arm and dragged her forcibly back to the desk.

“I saw you,” he shouted. “You can’t pull your tricks on me, sister.”

“Please,” Ann said, “what is the meaning of this?”

“Don’t gimme that stuff,” the fat man cried. “You stole my wallet. Somebody call the police.”

“I did no such thing!” Ann said hotly.

The desk clerk looked his pained embarrassment.

“Please,” he said. “We can settle this matter quietly. Mrs. Hardwicke, I know you didn’t take this gentleman’s wallet, but if you would let us look through your purse it would prove your innocence.”

“Why, certainly,” Ann said.

She opened her purse and her knees began to tremble. A man’s wallet was lying among her make-up and letters and change.

“Oh!” she said faintly. She was too terrified to do anything but stare at the incriminating wallet.

“You see?” the fat man cried triumphantly. He snatched his wallet from the purse.

“It’s — some mistake,” Ann said helplessly.

“I’ll say it was, sister,” he snapped. “You’ll have time to regret it, too. The cops are always happy to catch one of you hotel thiefs.”

“I’m not a thief,” Ann said, starting to cry. “I live here with my husband.”

“That’s a hot one, sister,” the man said. “Wouldn’t care to take me up to your husband, would you?”

Ann sniffled miserably.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said in a muffled voice. She couldn’t crawl to Peter now that she was in trouble. She started crying harder.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” the man snapped. “You’re lying from the start to finish. And don’t think those crocodile tears are going to help.”

“They’re not c — croc — odile tears,” Ann said, between sobs.

“Mrs. Hardwicke,” the desk clerk said, “I think it would be wise to take this man up to see your husband.”

“Your darn tootin’,” the man said. “If you’ve got a husband I want to see him. Come on.”

He dragged Ann to the elevator and the desk clerk followed, distraught.

Nastee lay on the desk blotter, weak with laughter. It had been the funniest thing he had seen in years...

Peter Hardwicke jerked open the closet door of the bedroom and was almost hit on the head by the heavy knitting bag which fell from the top shelf. He picked it up slowly. One string of yarn had been tied to the inside doorknob, so that when he opened the door it had pulled the bag from the shelf.

With fingers that suddenly trembled he opened the bag and lifted out several half-finished tiny garments. Under a ball of bright blue wool he saw a pair of knitted boots, about two inches long.

He stared dazedly at the knitted baby clothes, his face whitening. Remorse flooded over him.

“The poor kid,” he choked. “And I drove her away.”

Feverishly he stuffed the garments back into the knitting bag and grabbed his coat from the closet. He banged out of the room like a madman.

Tink smiled contentedly. Things would straighten out now. Whistling merrily he jumped to the bed and bounced to the floor.

Peter Hardwicke was striding toward the living room door when an imperative, angry knock sounded. He jerked open the door. Ann was standing there, between an angry looking fat man and the desk clerk. Her eyes were red from crying.

The fat man stepped forward importantly.

“Look here, mister,” he began, but he got no farther.

Peter shoved him out of the way and grabbed his wife by the shoulders.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said roughly.

Ann started crying again as Peter’s arms went around her hungrily.

“Just a minute,” the fat man broke in angrily. “Your wife tried to steal my wallet. What are you going to do about it?”

It took several seconds for the import of this remark to sink into Peter’s mind. When it did he took Ann by the shoulders and gently moved her out of the way. Then he stared thoughtfully at the heavy set, red-faced man.

“What am I going to do about it?” he repeated softly. “Just this. If you aren’t out of my sight in three seconds I will turn your life insurance policy into a claim. Do you follow me?”

The fat man got the general drift.

“Now, listen Buddy,” he said uneasily, “I—”

“One!” Peter said firmly.

“But—”

“Two!”

The fat man turned and ran. When Peter said ‘three’ his padded posterior was disappearing around the corner of the corridor.

Peter put his arm about Ann’s shoulder.

“Come on,” he said gaily. “I’ve got an overture to write. Now that there are three people interested in it I can’t fail.”

Ann squealed as Peter swung her up in his arms and strode into the apartment.

Tink and Jing had watched this scene with shining eyes.

“Oh, Tink,” Jing said, “you’re wonderful.”

Nastee appeared in the doorway, an unpleasant scowl on his face.

“Bah!” he said. “Everything I do turns out wrong.”

Tink looked at him thoughtfully.

“Maybe this will be a lesson to you,” he said.

“Bah!” said Nastee.

Jing was humming softly to herself.

“I think,” she said sweetly, “that Nastee needs a more forceful kind of lesson. Don’t you agree, Tink?”

Tink looked at her and nodded.

Orchestral Hall was crowded to capacity with smartly dressed men and women. From their vantage point on the edge of the conductor’s podium, Tink and Jing breathlessly regarded the glittering scene.

The orchestra was tuning up in the pit and the sound of the experimental scrapings drifted through the air, as exciting as sparks in a breeze.

In the expectant audience Jing picked out the young composer, Peter Hardwicke, and his wife. They were sitting together, hand-in-hand, occasionally looking happily at each other.

“I hope the overture is good,” Tink said.

“It is,” Jing said, “I know.”

Nastee was present also, sullen and ungracious, sitting glumly by himself a few inches from Tink and Jing. His little face was screwed up unpleasantly and Tink realized uneasily that more devilment was being plotted behind those surly features.

“Remember, Nastee,” he said worriedly, “you’ve promised not to start any trouble here.”

“Bah!” Nastee said.

“Nastee,” Jing said suddenly, “you must stay on this side of the podium with us. If you cross to the other you may cause trouble.”

Nastee leered at her, then stood up and walked defiantly to the opposite side of the podium.

“I’ll do what I like,” he called back nastily.

“Jing,” Tink sighed, “that’s not the way to handle Nastee. When you tell him not to do anything, that’s the first thing he’ll do.”

Jing smiled to herself.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

A thunder of applause broke from the audience then as the conductor, a stocky, flowing haired genius, made his appearance and marched to the podium. He acknowledged the ovation with a brief bow. Turning, he faced the orchestra and drew himself up to his full height.

Then, with the traditional gesture for attention, he rapped sharply on the podium with his baton.

All three of the sharp blows landed squarely on Nastee’s head, knocking him flat on his stomach, dazed, breathless and aching all over like a sore tooth.

The sounds of his outraged, wailing shrieks were completely drowned out by the crashing chords of the overture.

Tink looked at Nastee’s sprawled, dazed figure, and he began to laugh uncontrollably. He laughed until tears came to his eyes and then he turned weakly to Jing.

“You’re wonderful,” he said. “You knew what would happen to Nastee at the other end of the podium, didn’t you?”

“That’s why I told him not to go down there,” Jing said primly. “Of course I wasn’t sure he’d get hit, but the chance was too good to miss. I felt just a little bit guilty, but I’m sure the lesson will do him good.”

Tink stared at the elfinly beautiful girl in helpless admiration.

“Gee,” he said, “your wonderful.”

Nastee raised his aching head weakly.

“Bah!” he said.

Tink Takes Command

First published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1942.

The sky above Central Park was an azure canopy dotted with the white puffs of vagrant clouds. The air was as intoxicating as rare wine. In short, Nature was in one of her most benign and delightful moods. Everything was glorious.

Tink sighed contentedly and closed his eyes. He was lying in the comfortable cup of a soft green leaf-completely at peace with himself and creation.

Tink’s tranquillity could be traced to circumstances other than the balmy weather. For one thing he was rid of Nastee, his incorrigibly troublesome companion, for a while at least. And that was a distinct relief.

But there was another thing that gladdened Tink’s heart even more than Nastee’s blessed absence. And that was the presence of Jing, the tiny, exquisite leprichaun-girl whom he’d met a few weeks before.

He opened his eyes lazily and looked up at her. She was sitting on a toadstool swinging her legs and humming softly. As always he was struck with the piquant allure of her delicate, gracefully molded features and the slim lines of her body that seemed made for flowing, dancing motion.

She shook her long blonde curls and stretched luxuriously. Then, with a lithe motion, she sprang to her feet and pirouetted brilliantly.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she cried. “What is?” Tink asked.

“Oh, just everything. The weather, the sky, the clouds, everything.”

“You forgot to mention one other thing that’s wonderful,” Tink said.

“What?”

A chuckle bubbled from Tink.

“The fact that Nastee isn’t around causing trouble is pretty wonderful, I think.”

“Where is he?” Jing asked. “You told me, but I forgot.”

“He got homesick and went back to Ireland for a vacation,” Tink explained. “Maybe he’ll decide to stay there for good, but that’s too much to hope for.” Jing sat down again and frowned. “How did he get to Ireland?” she asked.

“He stowed away on a troop ship. He reached the County Down a few weeks ago. His home village is just a few miles from where the American soldiers have built their camp.”

“That isn’t far from Belfast, is it?” Jing asked. There was a troubled look in her eyes.

Tink noticed the expression. “Not very far,” he answered. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Jing answered. “Maybe I’m just being silly, but something in this morning’s paper has me worried. I didn’t think about it at the time, but now—”

“Now, what?” Tink demanded. “Has it got something to do with Nastee?”

“It might have,” said Jing. “Maybe you’d better look into it. There’s a morning paper over on that park bench. You’d better read the article.”

“All right,” said Tink, “I will.”

He stood up and Jing jumped to the ground beside him, then the two of them skipped across the grass to the park bench. Tink swung himself up by using the braces as a trapeze artist might, but Jing leaped to the seat with one graceful bound.

When Tink swung himself over the edge of the bench Jing had already found the article in the paper. She pointed to it, as Tink reached her side, panting from his exertion.

“There,” she said, “what do you make of that?”

Tink frowned and began reading. The story was datelined BELFAST. It was headed:

FRICTION SEEN DEVELOPING BETWEEN A.E.F. AND NATIVES OF IRISH STATE

(Belfast) Captain James Donavon of the American forces in Ulster, today issued an order confining his men to their barracks for the duration of their stay in Northern Ireland. The village of Ballycree which is the nearest village to the American camp has been ruled “out of bounds” for the American soldiers.

No explanation was given for this drastic action, but reliable observers are of the opinion that it will place a strain on American relations with Ulster. Captain Donavon refused to issue a statement to the Press. This is the first instance of friction between American soldiers and natives of Northern Ireland, all having been peaceful and serene until this time...

Tink read the dispatch twice, and he was scowling worriedly when he looked up at Jing.

“Are you thinking what I am?” asked Jing.

“I’m afraid so,” Tink said despairingly. “Ballycree is Nastee’s home village. I’ll bet anything he’s at the bottom of the trouble that’s brewing there.”

“But how could he be,” Jing protested. “It just doesn’t seem possible that he could cause that much trouble.”

“You don’t know Nastee,” Tink said gloomily.

“But,” Jing said, “what could he do to disrupt everything that way? And why would he want to make the soldiers mad at the people of Ireland?”

“No reason,” Tink said. “But he lives to stir up trouble, and I’ve got an awful suspicion that he’s behind this mess. This is terrible.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Jing.

Tink sat down and put his chin in his hands.

“There’s only one patriotic thing I can do,” he said.

“You mean—”

Tink nodded. “I’ve got to go to Ireland and stop Nastee. He’s getting too big for his britches. I’ll have to leave right away before things get any worse.”

“Will you wait for a troop ship?” Jing asked.

Tink shook his head firmly. “Nope. Haven’t got time.”

“What then?”

“I can get a bomber from Mitchell Field and be in Ireland in twenty-four hours. It’s the only thing to do.”

Jing clapped her hands and pirouetted gaily.

“Oh, won’t that be fun!” she cried. “I’ve never been in a plane.”

Tink looked at her, startled.

“Who said you were coming along?” he demanded.

“I did,” Jing said sweetly.

Tink decided that it was time to put his foot down.

“No,” he said firmly, “you aren’t coming. It — it might be dangerous.”

“I don’t care. I’m coming.”’

Tink put his hands on his hips.

“For the last time, no! You absolutely aren’t coming.”

The huge, American bomber landed smoothly and came to a stop within a hundred feet. When the pilots and radiomen crawled out and dropped to the ground, Tink said:

“Here we are, but I still don’t think you should have come.”

Jing grinned at him. “Maybe I can help you with Nastee. Anyway, I won’t be any trouble.”

The two leprichauns swung down from the plane then and headed for the green, sunshiny Irish countryside — and the village of Ballycree.

It only took them an hour to reach the small, picturesque, sea-side village at which the first contingent of American troops had landed. The camp where the bulk of the soldiers were bivouacked was situated several miles from the village. A winding dusty road led from the village to the camp, but when Tink and Jing arrived it was free from any travellers and there was not a sign of a soldier in any of the village streets or, what was worse, in any of the town’s numerous friendly bars.

Tink shook his head sadly as he viewed the cheerless, empty village. The townspeople walked the streets grim and unsmiling; even the children seemed oppressed by the lowering gloom that shrouded the village.

“Goodness, this is terrible,” Jing said anxiously. “Everybody looks so unhappy that it’s making me feel blue. You just have to do something about this, Tink.”

“We’d better go up to the camp,” Tink said. “Maybe we can find out something there.” He shook his head worriedly. “This thing looks bad.”

At the camp they found the same gloomy atmosphere. Soldiers stood about in groups of three and four, saying little, doing nothing. There was a general air of discontent and grumpiness evident.

“Oh, what are you going to do,” Jing almost wailed. “I just can’t bear the sight of all these unhappy soldiers.”

Tink patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something, but first of all I think we ought to see this Captain James Donavon who gave the order that confined these men to camp. We may be able to find out something from him.”

They easily located the officer’s tent and slipped through the flap into its clean, well-ordered interior. At a desk in the center of the tent sat a tall, blackhaired young man, with light blue eyes and a square, determined jaw. He would have been handsome if it weren’t for the black scowl that was stamped on his features. He wore the uniform and insignia of a Captain.

“I think this is our man,” Tink whispered.

“I wonder what he’s so mad about,” Jing said, regarding the young Captain with interest.

Tink frowned. “I think we’ll have to find that out from Nastee.”

The flap of the tent opened then and an orderly entered and saluted.

“Excuse me, sir, but I think it only my duty to report that the men are becoming very restless and discontented. They’re doing a lot of talking, sir.”

Captain James Donavon tapped a pencil impatiently against the desk.

“Well, let them talk,” he snapped. “I’m giving the orders and I want them obeyed. I want none of my men associating with those crazy, unreasonable, hot-tempered villagers.” The Captain stared moodily at the surface of his desk. “That’s final.”

“But, sir,” the orderly persisted, “our boys and the village people have been getting on splendidly. There hasn’t been one bit of trouble.”

“Then I’m making sure that there won’t be any,” the Captain said. His eyes were miserable and unhappy as he stood up and snapped.

“I don’t want to hear anymore about this, do you understand?”

The orderly shifted uncomfortably.

“I understand, sir. And you, yourself, won’t be going into the village, either?”

“No!” Captain Donavon exploded. “I never want to see the place again.”

“Well, sir, do you want me to pick up your belongings from Mayor McCarthy’s home? I stowed a lot of your gear there as you were billeted with the McCarthy’s when we first arrived.”

Captain Donavon clenched his fists and jammed them into his trouser pockets.

“Don’t mention the name of McCarthy in my presence,” he barked.

The orderly backed toward the tent flap.

“I didn’t mean to irritate you, sir,” he said worriedly. “I didn’t know you had anything against the Mayor. In fact, since you was so friendly with his daughter, Eileen, I kinda figured—”

“Get out!” Captain Donavon’ bellowed.

“But—”

“Get out!”

The orderly ducked through the tent flap, white-faced, and the Captain slumped behind the desk, his features grim and miserable.

“What a nasty man,” Jing said. She made a face at the young Captain and stuck out her tongue at him.

Tink was leaning against the leg of a camp stool, his forehead furrowed with worried lines.

“That won’t help any, he can’t see you,” he said abstractedly.

“I know, but it makes me feel better.”

Tink sighed. “We’ve got a big job ahead of us. Nastee has quite a head start on us. I guess we’d better look him up first.”

“How can you find him?”

Tink said, “follow me.”

He Led the way out of the Captain’s tent. In the cleared area enclosed by the soldier’s barracks he paused. When he noticed several men strolling into one particular tent, he nodded at Jing to follow him and started in that direction.

“Dice game,” he explained.

“What do you mean?” asked Jing. “Well, it’s a good bet that those men are getting together to play craps. And Nastee loves to start trouble by kicking the dice around and spoiling things in general. It’s an old trick of his. So if there’s a crap game going, it’s a cinch Nastee’ll be around.”

Tink was proven right on two counts. There was a crap game going and Nastee was on hand. Tink saw him the second he crawled under the tent-flap.

Nastee was in the center of the ring formed by the gambling soldiers, his sharp little face twisted in a malicious smile. He had obviously already caused a great deal of consternation for there were angry rumblings from the gambling soldiers.

But with Tink’s arrival Nastee’s fun was over. He saw Tink and the mischievous smile faded from his face. It was replaced by an almost comical look of startled consternation.

“W-when did you get here?” he said weakly.

“Never mind that,” Tink said sternly. “I want to talk to you.”

Dumbfounded by Tink’s unexpected arrival, Nastee allowed himself to be led from the tent where Jing was waiting.

“Oh, you’re here too,” he said sulkily, when he saw the Leprichaun-girl.

“What have you been up to?” Tink demanded. “I know you’re at the bottom of this trouble.”

A sly evasive smile plucked at Nastee’s lips.

“What trouble?” he smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Tink said grimly. “What have you done to Captain Donavon?”

Nastee grinned and stretched out on the ground, cushioning his back against a soft blade of grass.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Tink turned despairingly to Jing. “We were right,” he said. “Nastee is behind this trouble.”

Nastee started to laugh, a thin, piping laugh that shook his whole frame. He rolled on his side, hands clasped over his belly, laughing uncontrollably.

“This is one mess you’ll never straighten out,” he said, between gasps of laughter.

Jing regarded his convulsed form with frosty anger. Her small foot tapped the ground in helpless exasperation.

“I think you’re just terrible to cause all this trouble,” she said stormily. Nastee continued to giggle.

“You don’t even know what happened,” he said.

A speculative gleam appeared in Tink’s eyes. He remembered something the young Captain had said.

“I think I do,” he said. “I should have thought of it before this. I’ll bet Mayor McCarthy and his daughter, Eileen, are mixed up some way. I’ll bet you’ve caused some mix-up between the Captain and Eileen. It’s just the kind of thing you’d like to do.”

“You’re just guessing,” Nastee jeered, but there was a sudden worried expression lurking in his sly eyes.

Tink noticed the expression and smiled.

“I was right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Come on, Jing, we’ve got work to do.”

“Go ahead,” Nastee said grouchily, “but it won’t do you any good.”

Tink took Jing by the hand and they skipped across the camp ground to the Captain’s tent. Jing was red-cheeked with excitement.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded breathlessly. “Can I help?”

“You certainly can,” Tink answered. “We’ve got’ to work on the Captain and this Eileen McCarthy, whoever she is. I’ll take the Captain, but you’ll have to handle the girl. You can find her in the Village easy enough.”

Jing clapped her hands excitedly.

“That will be wonderful,” she cried. “But what will I do?”

“Just use your feminine intuition and trust to luck,” Tink replied. “I’ll go to work on the Captain and then I’ll meet you about dusk at the camp gate and we can compare notes.”

“Oh, this will be fun!” Jing cried. With a bright smile she flashed away in a series of brilliant pirouettes...

Tink watched Jing until she was out of sight, then he hurried to Captain Donavon’s tent. He found the young officer seated at his desk, head buried in his hands.

Tink’s sympathetic nature was touched by the spectacle of the young man’s unhappiness. He felt more anxious than ever to undo the misery Nastee had, somehow, caused.

But until he found out the facts of the case there was little he could do. With this in mind he scaled the telephone cord to the top of the Captain’s desk and seated himself comfortably on top of a marble paper weight.

He put his chin in his hands and studied the Captain carefully. The young officer had lifted his head from the desk and was staring miserably at a small framed snapshot next to the ink-well.

Tink noticed the lines of pain and worry that interlaced around the young man’s eyes, and he noticed the sorrowful expression in his clear blue eyes, but he also saw the hard determined angle of the officer’s square jaw.

Tink then turned his attention to the snapshot. And the girl pictured in the snapshot was well worth anyone’s attention. She was young and fair, with an impish sparkle in her lovely blue eyes. Her lips were curved in a smile that illumined her features with a breath-taking radiance. Hair the color and sheen of ripe blackberries fell to her shoulders in two silken smooth braids, lending an old-fashioned dignity to her charming vivacity.

Tink sighed. She was lovely, that’s all there was to it.

The Captain picked up the snapshot of the dark-haired girl, studied it for a moment, then crumpled it in his fist and dropped it to the floor.

His lips were twisted and bitter.

“And I loved her so,” he muttered savagely.

Tink found his sympathies allied with the young Captain. He was obviously a clean-cut, personable young man, and the girl in the snapshot — Eileen McCarthy, probably — had apparently thrown him over because of Nastee’s machinations.

Her actions, he was sure, were completely unjustified. For the remainder of the afternoon Tink stayed close to Captain Donavon and his liking for the young officer grew with each passing hour.

When the slanting rays of the sun were fading to a dull crimson glow, he left the tent and hurried to the camp gate to meet Jing. Maybe she had learned something from her visit to the village that would be helpful in unsnarling this problem.

She was waiting for him, tapping her foot impatiently against the ground. He noticed that her customary smile was not in evidence.

“What did you find out?” he asked. “Men!” she said. She wrinkled her nose in faint distaste. “I guess they’re all alike. That poor girl!”

Tink stared at her, puzzled.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Plenty,” Jing answered cryptically. “But perhaps you’d better tell me what you learned first.”

For no good reason Tink began to feel faintly uneasy.

“I didn’t find out much,” he said. “The Captain is a swell fellow, clean, upright, honorable, and this McCarthy girl is a fool if she let anything Nastee did change her mind about him. That’s all I found out.”

“Oh,” Jing said, “that’s your opinion of him, is it? Well. I think you should know that your precious Captain is nothing but a — a beast, that’s what he is.”

“You can’t be serious,” Tink said, dazed by her vehemence.

“I was never more serious in my life,” Jing said firmly. “Your Captain Donavon is an unscrupulous, dishonorable ogre.”

Tink shook his head unbelievingly. “You’re just being silly,” he said. “You’re acting just like a woman. I don’t care what you think the Captain’s done, I still think he’s all right.” Jing’s eyes were as frosty as the points of icicles.

“So you don’t care what he’s done?”

“No,” Tink said stubbornly, “I don’t.”

“Well,” Jing said frostily, “I’m certainly glad I found out this side of your character.

“For heaven’s sake, what’s he done?” Tink said in sudden alarm.

“Oh, nothing much, according to your standards,” Jing said coldly. “He merely happens to be a married man with a wife and five children in the United States, that’s all.”

Tink felt suddenly weak.

“But in spite of that,” Jing went on, “he wanted this sweet girl to marry him. I suppose, though, you think that’s all right.”

Tink swallowed with an effort. He felt dizzy.

“How do you know?” he managed to ask.

“I saw a letter written to him by his wife. Full of ‘dears’ and ‘darlings’ and information about his five children. And,” Jing added darkly, “a hint about his sixth.”

“Sixth!” Tink echoed hollowly.

“Yes,” Jing snapped, “and all the while he was leading this poor girl on with sweet talk and proposals. It’s a good thing she discovered the letter on top of his bureau. He was billeted at her father’s home, and while she was cleaning up his room she found this letter. It almost broke her heart, poor thing. When he came back that night she sent him packing. And good riddance. Her father wanted to take after him with a gun, and most of the villagers feel the same way. And you think he’s wonderful!”

After his first shock, Tink’s nimble mind began to function rapidly. Something was wrong!

“I’ll bet Nastee had something to do with that letter,” he said excitedly.

“Maybe he did,” said Jing. “And more power to him. He’s prevented a terrible injustice and I think he deserves a vote of thanks.”

“But,” Tink said, “if the letter hadn’t been discovered everything would have been all right.”

The words had hardly passed his lips before he realized his mistake.

“I didn’t mean,” he began a desperate explanation but Jing cut him short.

“Oh, everything would have been all right, would it?” she blazed. “Just as long as he wasn’t found out, everything would have been ducky. Married, with five, maybe six children by this time, and you think it’s all right for him to make love to every girl he meets — as long as he doesn’t get caught.”

“I didn’t mean that exactly,” Tink said desperately. “I only meant—”

“I know precisely what you meant,” Jing said, and her voice was as frigid as an Arctic storm: She turned on her heel and marched away, her chin high in the air.

Tink stared after her erect, departing back, stunned and miserable. This was something he had never expected...

With a heavy sigh he slouched moodily back to the camp, his thoughts dark and unhappy. Jing had deserted him and the Captain had five children, maybe six, and everything was in a magnificent muddle.

And Tink didn’t give a damn!

His bitterness was a result of his realization that he had reached the nadir of his existence; things couldn’t be blacker; his cup of woe was slopping over and the situation couldn’t get worse.

In that he was mistaken!

A half hour later, §till slouching despairingly about the camp, he met Nastee.

Nastee’s sly little face was twisted with a gloating smile, and he was almost dancing in his glee. Tink was too miserably preoccupied to notice these ominous symptoms.

“Too bad, too bad,” Nastee chortled, “but it’s a case of the best man winning. I always knew she liked me, but I hardly thought she’d throw you over like this.”

“Like what?” Tink said stupidly. “What are you talking about?”

“Your girl,” Nastee said, grinning widely.

“What about her?” Tink demanded.

Nastee smirked smugly.

“There’s a party in the glen tonight. She wants me to go with her. I knew she’d get tired of you sooner or later.”

Tink listened incredulously, a sick empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t believe you,” he gasped weakly.

“Come along and see,” Nastee said with a challenging smirk. “I’m meeting, her at the camp gate.”

With a mounting premonition of impending disaster Tink followed Nastee to the camp gate and there he realized that Nastee was not lying. Jing was waiting for him!

She was smiling brightly at Nastee, ignoring Tink.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said.

Nastee smirked at Tink and took her by the arm.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They left, arm-in-arm, smiling.

Tink groaned, watching them depart, Jing’s disloyalty left him stunned and hopelessly miserable. With slumping shoulders and a deep distrust in all womankind, he returned to the camp.

Night came and he fell into a despairing slumber, resolved to return to America as soon as possible...

When he was awakened from a fitful slumber some hours later by a hand shaking his shoulder, he was still truculent and cynical.

“Wake up!” a voice said urgently.

“There’s no time to waste.”

He opened his eyes, looked up and saw Jing standing over him, a faint flush of excitement coloring her exquisite features.

“You!” Tink said. He struggled to a sitting position. “You — Brutus,” he said moodily.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Jing said. “I only went out with Nastee to see if he’d spill something.”

“Ha!” Tink said bleakly.

“For heaven’s sake,” Jing said, a faint annoyance creeping into her tone, “stop acting like the second act of a bad play. I’ll admit I was mad at you for a while, but then I remembered what you said about Nastee being at the bottom of the trouble between the Captain and the Irish colleen, and I decided to investigate.”

Tink still felt injured but his curiosity got the better of him.

“And what did you find out?” he asked.

Jing smiled triumphantly.

“Nastee is responsible for the trouble,” she announced. “When we got to the glen he started bragging about how much smarter he is than you.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Tink said. “Yes he did. He made out a pretty good case for himself too.” Jing giggled. “Then he found a beer bottle with a few drops left, so he crawled in and finished them up. He got so drunk he could hardly get back out of the bottle. I had to pull him out by the hair of his head.”

“Sounds like everybody had a fine time,” Tink said with a sad sigh.

“Don’t be silly,” Jing said crisply. “When he got out of the bottle he told me the whole story of how he broke up the Captain’s romance with Eileen McCarthy. Then he passed out under a toadstool. I hurried right here, to tell you.”

In spite of his hurt feelings Tink found his interest quickening.

“And what did Nastee do?” he demanded.

“It’s simply a case of mistaken identity,” Jing said. “I’ll tell you the whole story and you can decide what to do.”

When she finished Tink leaped to his feet.

“I should have suspected something like this. Now let’s get this straight. There are two James Donavons in camp. One a private, and the other the Captain. Nastee found some of the private’s mail, planted it on the Captain — Oh, how simple it must have been!”

“What can we do to help?” Jing asked anxiously. “She’s such a lovely girl it would be a shame if we couldn’t straighten things out for her.”

“Where’s the letter that started all this trouble?” Tink demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jing answered. “Nastee wouldn’t tell me. I think he hid it somewhere after the damage was done.”

Tink frowned. “That’s bad. We need that letter. But we can’t waste time looking for it. We’ve got to figure out some way to make Private James Donavon meet this girl that Captain James Donavon was in love with.”

“What good will that do?” Jing asked.

“Can’t tell,” Tink shrugged. “Maybe none. But there’s just a chance if we get them together something will happen to explain the whole thing. You see if this girl realized, that it was another James Donavon’s mail that she had read, it would automatically clear things up.”

“It’s a long chance, isn’t it?” Jing said worriedly. “And how are you going to bring Private James Donavon and the girl together? No soldiers are allowed to leave camp you know.”

“I know,” Tink said, “but I’ve got an idea. Come on, let’s go over to the Captain’s quarters.”

Captain James Donavon was seated at his desk when Tink and Jing entered the tent. His orderly was standing beside him.

“Who shall I send to the village for your luggage, sir?” the orderly asked.

The Captain was staring moodily at the letters on his desk, his face set in gloomy lines.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Corporal Reynolds will do, if he isn’t busy. I’ll write out a pass for him.”

He picked up a pen and pulled a scratch pad toward him. His pen scratched faintly as he scrawled out the pass and signed it hurriedly.

Tink nudged Jing excitedly.

“Maybe this is our break,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” asked Jing with a frown.

The Captain stood up and put his hat on.

“It’s too early for him to leave now,” he said, “but get him started after breakfast. I want to get this thing out of the way.”

With a brief nod to the orderly he stamped out of the tent, hard-faced and grim.

The orderly looked after him and shook his head sadly.

“Too bad,” he muttered, as he left the tent.

“Come on,” Tink said to Jing.

He grabbed the telephone cord and clambered to the top of the desk. Jing followed him with a puzzled look on her face.

“What have you got in mind?” she asked, as she joined him.

Tink was hastily scanning the pass the Captain had written out and he didn’t answer immediately...

“This might do it,” he said at last.

He hopped across the desk to where the pen was lying. Exerting all his strength he was able to lift one end from the desk.

“You’ll have to help me, Jing,” he panted. “Take the other end.”

“I still don’t see what you’re going to do,” Jing protested.

“Wait and see,” Tink said with a grin.

Between them they carried the heavy pen over to the pass the Captain had made out before leaving.

“This pass,” explained Tink, “has Corporal Reynolds’ name on it. All we have to do is scratch out his name and write in the name of Private James Donavon and presto! Our problem of getting him and the Captain’s girl together is solved.”

Jing shook her head admiringly.

“My, but you’re clever,” she said.

Tink set the point of the pen on the paper and Jing lifted the other end in the air. Panting heavily Tink scratched out the name of Corporal Reynolds and wrote in the name of Private James Donavon. When he completed the job he was worn out, but he had the virtuous satisfaction of having completed the first step in his plan.

“Now what?” Jing asked, when they replaced the pen.

“Now we head for the village and the home of Mayor McCarthy and his daughter, Eileen: Private Donavon should arrive there in an hour or so to pick up the Captain’s equipment. We want to be there then...

The interior of the McCarthy home, a pleasant, well-furnished cottage, was well lighted by the streaming morning sun, when Tink and Jing arrived and settled themselves on the mantel to await developments.

They did not have to wait long. In fifteen or twenty minutes the front door bell rang, and from the rear of the house a big, red-faced, white-haired man emerged to answer it.

“That’s Mayor McCarthy,” Jing informed Tink.

The Mayor jerked open the door and the scowl on his face deepened as he saw the uniformed figure standing there.

“Well?” he demanded truculently.

The soldier in the doorway removed his hat.

“Sorry to trouble you, sir,” he said, “but I’ve come for Captain Donavon’s gear.”

“That’s Private Donavon,” Tink whispered.

“You mean, you hope it is,” Jing said.

The beet-red face of the Mayor looked ready to explode. The soldier in the doorway was shifting uneasily.

“So you’ve come for Captain Donavon’s gear, have you?” he roared. “Well you can take it and good riddance. I don’t want anything of that man’s contaminating my house. And you can tell your Captain for me if I see him on my premises again I’ll set the dogs on him.”

The soldier in the doorway was a mouse-like little man with scraggly black hair and pale cheeks. He looked very frightened.

“Yes sir,” he gulped, “I’ll tell him.”

“Dad!” a clear feminine voice called from the rear of the housie. “Ask the soldier to come in. I’ll give him C–Captain Donavon’s things in just a minute.”

Jing nudged Tink.

“That’s Eileen,” she whispered.

The soldier entered the front room of the cottage, twisting his cap in his hands, and the sputtering Mayor stamped wrath fully to the rear of the house.

Tink smiled contentedly. Things were working nicely.

In a minute a slim, beautiful, darkhaired Irish girl entered the room. Her face was pale and haunted with deep purple shadows under great, lovely eyes. She carried a belt, a military tunic and several sheafs of letters and reports in her arms.

“This is all I could find in the Captain’s room,” she said to the soldier, as she shifted the objects to his hands.

“Thank you, Miss. I’m sure everything’s here.”

The soldier shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and stared miserably at the pale, unhappy girl. He started for the door, then paused and turned.

“And,” he blurted, “I’ll tell him how nice you’ve been and everything.”

The girl smiled wanly.

“I wouldn’t bother,” she said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t care one way or the other.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss,” the soldier said earnestly. “I mean, he cares a lot about people and everybody. And he’d want to know if anybody put themselves out on his account. He’s like that. That’s why he’s best C.O. in this man’s army.”

“Is he?” the girl said, a little breathlessly.

“Why sure,” the soldier said enthusiastically. “Everybody likes the Captain.” He paused and looked at the melting glint in the girl’s eyes. “That is,” he added cautiously, “almost everybody likes him.”

Tink squeezed Jing’s hand hopefully. “Things are going fine,” he whispered.

Jing didn’t answer. Instead she pointed to the door which was open an inch or so. “We have company,” she said.

Tink glanced at the door and his bright confidence faded.

Nastee stood in the crack of the door, a ghoulish smile on his puckered little features. He crossed the floor and swung himself up to the mantel with the aid of a dangling tassel that hung from the mantel drapery.

He sat down next to Jing. His sharp gleaming eyes were alight with sly speculation as he looked swiftly from Tink to Jing.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“Nothing at all,” Tink said hastily. Nastee’s sharp eyes swung to the Irish lass and the soldier standing in the center of the room. The soldier was extolling the merits of the Captain and the girl was listening, a rapt gleam in her eye.

“Oh, ho,” Nastee said. “So that’s your game. Soften the girl up by filling her full of stories about the Captain, eh?” He grinned nastily. “I can fix that, just you wait and see. I’ll remind her of a story about the Captain that isn’t so pleasant.”’

Before Tink could stop him he hopped down from the mantel and scurried across to a table that was set against the wall. He shinnied up the gnarled table leg and kicked back the knitted covering that protected the surface of the table.

A letter was visible against the gleaming mohogany.

“Hai ha!” he laughed. “This is the letter that caused all the trouble. Watch what happens when the girl is reminded of her dear Captain’s wife and five, maybe six, brats.”

Jing started to cry out, but Tink squeezed her arm.

“Give him enough rope,” he whispered.

With another malicious giggle Nastee drew back his foot and kicked the letter into the air. It fluttered to the ground at the feet of the girl.

She picked it up and stared at it for a long moment, her face hardening and the light fading from her eyes.

“I almost forgot this,” she said bitterly. “Your Captain may be all you say, but as far as I’m concerned he’s the lowest type of “creature on this earth!”

Nastee was holding his sides in a paroxysm of glee.

“What did I tell you?” he chortled, between gasps.

But Tink was watching the soldier and he saw the man reach out with an incredulous look on his face and take the letter from the girl.

“Why, Miss,” he said in a startled voice, “where did this come from?” Without waiting for a reply he slipped the letter from the envelope and scanned it rapidly.

“It’s from Maisie!” he cried delightedly.

The girl was looking at him as if he’d gone mad.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “That letter belongs to Captain Donavon. You’ve no right to be reading it.”

“It’s from my wife, Maisie,” the soldier said rapturously. “It doesn’t belong to the Captain. He hasn’t got a wife.”

The girl’s eyes opened wide and her cheeks flushed red.

“You’re talking nonsense,” she said weakly. “You must be.”

The soldier was grinning widely.

“No I’m not, Miss. This letter must’ve come in with the last shipment of mail.” A dazed look spread over his face. “Lord! That was two months ago. Maybe I’ve got six kids now.”

The girl shook her head bewilderedly. “You c — can’t be telling the truth. What was the letter doing in the Captain’s room? And why was it addressed to him? Oh, you’re lying to me!”

“No, Miss, I’m not,” the soldier insisted. “The Captain had the letter for the very good reason that it’s his job to censor all mail, coming and going. And about it being addressed to him, why look again!”

The girl took the letter eagerly, but her shoulders slumped despairingly when she studied it.

“Right there in black and white,” she said accusingly. “It’s addressed to ‘James Donavon’.”

“Naturally,” the soldier said. “I’m James Donavon. Same name as the Captain. This ain’t the first time our mails got mixed up.”

Jing hugged Tink happily.

“You did it!” she cried. “Everything all right now. Oh, Tink, you’re marvelous.”

The girl was looking at the letter, a dazed happy look in her eyes.

“Then this is your letter,” she exclaimed.

The soldier nodded, grinning.

“That’s what I been trying to tell you, Miss.”

“Then the Captain isn’t married to Maisie?”

“He’d better not be,” the soldier said.

“And he doesn’t have five children?”

The soldier grinned happily.

“He doesn’t have six children!”

The Irish girl crushed the letter to her as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

“Oh!” she cried, “I’ve never been happier in my life.”

She leaned forward and kissed the amazed soldier on the cheek.

“Take that to your Captain,” she laughed.

The soldier rubbed his cheek in embarrassment.

“I couldn’t hardly do that,” he said, “but I’ll explain things so’s he’ll get the general idea.”

He left then and the girl danced back through the room to the rear of the house, singing happily.

Tink and Jing sat on the mantel, swinging their legs over the edge. Tink had his arm around Jing’s waist and they laughed until the tears came to their eyes.

Nastee was standing on the mahogany table, his features twisted in a scowl of bitter disappointment. He stared at them balefully, hands set belligerently on his hips.

“Well, what’s so funny!” he snapped.

“You,” Jing giggled.

Nastee scowled unpleasantly at them and then he slid down the table leg and made for the door, both hands pressed to his temples.

“I think he’s got a hangover,” Tink observed with considerable satisfaction.

That night peace was restored to the pleasant village of Ballycree. Soldiers from the American Camp strolled the streets of the little town and smiled in genuine friendliness at the villagers, who patted them on the back and invited them into their homes to sample their beer and meet their daughters.

A pale, mellow moon cast a lambent glow over the village and countryside and by its friendly light couples could be seen strolling arm in arm through dells and glens in which the tiny town nestled.

One of these couples stopped to rest by an old-fashioned stone well.

Captain James Donavon looked down at the beautiful, dark-haired girl at his side and he sighed in sheer happiness.

“You’ll always love me, won’t you?” he said softly.

“Forever and ever,” the girl answered, smiling.

Tink and Jing were seated on the edge of the well, listening interestedly. Nastee was bathing his fevered brow in the bucket that swung gently over the deep dark well.

Jing sighed and looked at the moon. “Aren’t they a wonderful couple?” she said dreamily.

Tink nodded happily. “It would have been a shame if anything happened to their romance.”

Nastee looked up from the rim of the bucket.

“Remind me never to drink beer again,” he said mournfully. “And,” he added spitefully, “don’t be too surprised if something does happen to the Captain’s beautiful romance.” He grinned wickedly. “I just have a hunch that someone is in for a very unpleasant surprise.”

At that moment the Captain leaned back and his elbow jarred against the well crank. With a rusty creak the ratchet slipped and the swinging bucket plummeted downward into the black depths of the well.

The Captain looked around, slightly surprised.

“Well,” he said, grinning, “no harm done.”

He took the dark-haired girl by the arm and they sauntered slowly away.

Tink and Jing peered over the well’s rim. Faintly they-heard Nastee’s outraged, spluttering shrieks from the depths of the deserted well. They looked at each other and smiled. Then they climbed down to the ground and sauntered away, arm-in-arm.

Tink Fights the Gremlins

First published in Fantastic Adventures, October 1943.

Chapter I

The interior of the small London flat was bright and cheerful. Strong northern light came in the wide, uncurtained windows and fell in regular patterns across the plain furnishings and the dozens of half-finished paintings which were stacked about the floor and hung from every wall of the high-ceilinged room.

A tall, dark-haired man in a painter’s smock stood in the center of the room studying intently an easel on which a half-completed painting of three roses was spread. He held a pipe in one hand and there was a curious, puzzled expression on his face as he studied the painting.

Tink, Jing and Nastee, the three New York leprechauns, were sitting on the edge of the easel, watching him with bright interested eyes.

“I think he’s terribly handsome,” Jing said.

She was sitting between Tink and Nastee, but she had edged over as close to Tink as possible. Nastee’s sour little face was cupped in his hands and his lips were pressed in a thin dissatisfied line.

“You would!” he said disgustedly.

“What’s the matter with you, Nastee?” Tink asked. “You’re even more bitter today than usual.”

“Mind your own business,” Nastee snapped.

Jing giggled. “He’s still mad at you for dumping him into that well in Ireland.”

“Well,” Tink grinned, “it was Saturday night, wasn’t it? He needed a bath anyway and I just saved him the trouble.”

“Very funny,” Nastee muttered sarcastically. “Pardon me if I don’t roll on the floor laughing.”

“You shouldn’t hold grudges like that,” Jing said. “After all, that happened months ago.”

“By the way,” Tink said, looking at Nastee with a sudden suspicion, “where have you been since then? You showed up here only a week ago. And how did you know where to find us?”

Nastee grinned maliciously.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he jeered. “You two may think you’re pretty smart, but you may be singing another tune before long.”

Tink’s face was serious as he glanced at Jing.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he whispered worriedly. “Nastee sounds like he’s got something up his sleeve.”

“Oh, he’s just talking,” Jing said. “Don’t pay any attention to him. Anyway, he couldn’t cause any harm here.”

“I know,” Tink said thoughtfully, “but that’s just why I’m anxious.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. The young painter, with a last worried look at his half-finished painting, crossed the room and opened the door.

A slim, dark-haired girl in the trim uniform of the Ferry Command was standing in the doorway. She smiled happily into the young painter’s incredulous face.

“Ann Masterson!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Still smiling, the girl saluted smartly and straightened her slim, square shoulders. “Reporting for duty, Lieutenant Diggles,” she said.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the young painter said dazedly.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently.

“What are you doing in that uniform? And how did you know I was a lieutenant?” he asked.

“Oh, Tom,” the girl said excitedly, “I’ve got a thousand things to tell you. But I’m so happy about seeing you I hardly know where to begin.” She grinned into his still incredulous eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask me to come in?”

“Why — why sure,” the young painter said. He stepped aside and the girl walked into the room, glancing quickly about with a pleased little smile on her lips. “Why it’s lovely here,” she said, turning to him. “It’s almost like your studio in New York.”

“Light’s not quite so good,” he said. He was still staring at her unbelievingly. “Now break down and tell me everything,” he said, “or I’ll forget my chivalric background and spank the daylights out of you, uniform or not.” The girl grinned mischievously and pirouetted on slim ankles.

“Isn’t it stunning,” she said breathlessly. She stopped and smoothed the trim, pencil-slim skirt with proud hands. “I wouldn’t trade it for a genuine Schiaparelli,” she said with sudden seriousness.

“I can imagine,” Tom Diggles said with just a touch of irony. “You girls all love uniforms.”

“That’s not fair, Tom,” Ann said. “You should realize that we are proud of what our uniforms symbolize and that’s all. But I see you haven’t changed since New York. You still think girls in uniform are just romantic exhibitionists, don’t you?”

Tom Diggles shrugged and said, “It doesn’t make much difference what I think. But it isn’t girls in uniform I mind. It’s just that most of them are so light-headed and incompetent that it drives you crazy.”

“Oh, you’re impossible,” Ann said, turning away from him with an angry whirl of her skirts. “You’ve got a medieval attitude about women that will never change. You think we should be locked away in cloisters and spend our time doing lace work, and let the great big strong men run the world and make all the decisions.”

“That’s not what I think at all,” Tom said heatedly. “Like every woman, you twist and distort everything I say until the original thought is unrecognizable.

You bring two things to every argument, a closed mind and an open mouth. There are a thousand important things for the woman of today to do, but running around in uniforms, getting in the way of vital work, is not one of them.”

“Well regardless of what you think,” Ann said coolly, “I have been assigned to an aircraft maintenance corps, and my first official duty in London is to bring you these orders from Colonel Langley, of the First Bomber Command.”

She drew a sheaf of sealed papers from a leather pouch at her waist and handed them to the young man.

“And I hope they’re sending you to Iceland,” she said bitterly. “I understand the Eskimo women don’t wear uniforms and do nothing more dramatic than chew whale blubber all day. You’ll love it there.”

The young man glanced at the unopened orders and then looked up at the girl, and there was an unwilling smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I see you still adore me,” he grinned. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her head up slightly.

“I’m sorry for acting like a boor,” he said quietly, and he was no longer smiling. “My reception of a fellow American in London wasn’t very warm, was it?”

“No,” the girl said, “it wasn’t. You did everything but throw me down the steps.”

“Let’s not fight any more,” the young man said. “There’s enough fighting going on in the world today without our making every chance meeting another all-out battle.” He looked out the window and his eyes were serious as he watched a crew of men filling in a huge bomb crater in the middle of the street. The sun was strong and clean and the air was touched with the first breath of spring, but still the signs of war and death were visible on London’s face.

“The Nazis have brought a taste of Hell to the world,” he said quietly, “and things will never be right again until the last one is exterminated. But, in the meantime,” he shrugged and turned away from the window, “let’s put an armistice to our private little war, shall we?”

“Of course,” the girl said gently. The young man smiled at her and then opened his orders. He read them quickly and when he finished he shook his head disgustedly.

“What’s the matter?” the girl asked. She grinned slightly. “Iceland?”

“Nope,” the young man said. “Just a notice that I’m to be engaged in aerial reconnaissance for the next few months.” He folded the orders and shoved them into his pocket with a bitter gesture. “I’ve been begging to be assigned to an active bomber command for six months, and this is what I get.”

“You’re luckier than most,” Ann said. “You’ve seen quite a bit of excitement already. Think of the poor boys who haven’t had any fun at all.”

The young man looked at her and his lips tightened ominously.

“My dear,” he said gently, “you and I just signed a peace pact, and I am most anxious to keep it. But if you don’t want hostilities renewed, please stop referring to the fun and excitement of aerial duty over Europe. I can assure you there is no fun connected with the work. It’s hard and tough, and half the time your heart’s in your mouth, which isn’t a very pleasant sensation.”

“But you are all anxious to be assigned to that kind of work,” Ann protested.

“We want to be in a spot where we make the Nazis bleed and burn,” the young man said quietly. “All of us have memories of comrades shot down, friends killed in bombing raids, and we’re out to settle that score. Not because it’s fun, but because it has to be done, and the sooner it’s done, the sooner this world will return to something like normalcy. And,” he added with something of his old grin, “the sooner we can get our women out of uniforms and back in front of stoves where they belong.”

“Let’s not start all that again,” Ann said. “And anyway, a lot of women I know don’t belong in front of stoves. If you ever tasted my biscuits you’d know what I mean.”

“I guess you’re right,” Tom said, with a grin. “Okay, cease firing. Anyway,” he sighed, “maybe I’ll get another crack at my kind of action when I finish this assignment.”

“Everything’s important, you know,” Ann said. “After all, where would the bombers be without aerial reconnaissance?”

“You’re right,” Tom said. “There’s no point in griping. And I’ve been laid up here so long now that I should take anything and be thankful.”

“How long have you been on the sick list?” Ann asked.

“Almost two months,” Tom said. “I got my final okay from the medicos last week, so I expected my orders along pretty soon. But,” he smiled, “I didn’t expect such a charming courier.”

“Well,” Ann said, “this really wasn’t my job. I’m attached to aircraft maintenance, but I heard the colonel giving these orders to the regular courier, so I just took over the job.”

“I’m glad you did,” Tom said. “This is just like old times, isn’t it?” He glanced over his shoulder at his uncompleted painting. “I would have gone crazy if I hadn’t these paintings to work on. None of them are particularly good but they keep me occupied. This one here,” he said pointing to the easel on which the painting of the roses was spread, “has got me stumped.”

He took the girl by the arm and led her to the easel.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “Well for one thing it isn’t finished,” Tom smiled. “But it seems to change during the night. I work as long as there’s light, but the next morning there seems to be something—” He shook his head and laughed. “I guess I am losing my mind.”

Tink nudged Jing.

“I told you last night you’d better stop dabbling with this painting.”

“I didn’t do much,” Jing said. “I just changed the colors a bit. Anyway,” she added defensively, “I know more about flowers than any old painter.” Nastee was staring gloomily at the young man and now he said jeeringly, “Isn’t that a touching sight?”

Tink looked and saw that he had slipped his arm about the girl’s slim waist and she had leaned her dark head against his shoulder.

“I think that’s wonderful,” Jing said softly.

“Bah!” Nastee said. “If I needed anything to make me feel completely happy about my new job, this is it.”

“New job?” Ting asked. He looked suspiciously at the sour-pussed little leprechaun. “What new job? I thought there was something funny about your absence. Come on, out with it. What kind of a new job have you got?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nastee sneered.

“Yes, I would,” Tink said grimly. “And if you don’t open up, I’ll look around for another well to toss you in.”

Nastee wriggled uneasily.

“It’s none of your business,” he said.

“I think I’m going to make it my business,” Tink said.

The young lieutenant turned and brushed his lips across the girl’s soft cheek.

“I think a lot about you, Ann,” he murmured. “I sometimes dream a bit about — later.”

“What sort of dreams?” the girl asked quietly.

“Very silly ones, I guess,” Tom said, with a short laugh. “I dream of this mess ending and me heading back to the United States and finding you just as lovely as you are now waiting—”

“Waiting for what?” the girl asked, and her voice was only a whisper in the room.

“For me,” Tom said. He laughed without humor. “That’s where the dream gets rather silly.”

The girl turned slowly and looked into his eyes, earnestly.

“Not so silly, Tom,” she said softly.

The young lieutenant looked at her for an instant, then he took her in his arms and held her close.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmured, his lips pressed against her hair.

Nastee squirmed and looked away.

“Will I be glad to put an end to that,” he said.

“How are you going to put an end to it?” Tink asked.

“You’re getting nosey again,” Nastee smirked.

The young lieutenant looked down at the girl and smiled.

“I’ll come back, dear,” he said.

“Oh, be careful, Tom,” the girl said anxiously. “I’ll be worrying for you every second.”

“Don’t be a silly little goose,” the lieutenant laughed. “I’ve got nothing to worry about but the gremlins.”

“The gremlins?” Ann laughed. “I’ve heard about them. You don’t take them seriously, do you?”

“Of course not. But the English lads are different. They’ll tell you a thousand stories to prove that there are actually little creatures maliciously tampering with their planes. But it’s just a silly superstition.”

Nastee laughed unpleasantly.

“That’s what you think,” he sneered.

Chapter II

Tink looked searchingly at Nastee.

The ugly, bitter little leprechaun had an expression of unholy triumph on his face that was unsettling. Whenever Nastee looked so gloatingly happy, Tink knew that trouble was brewing.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. He knew that the humans couldn’t hear their voices, so he didn’t bother to speak softly.

Nastee chuckled.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, hopping to his feet. “And he will too,” he added, pointing one tiny finger at the young lieutenant.

“Nastee!” Tink cried, in a shocked voice. “Have you joined the gremlins?”

Nastee assumed an expression of outraged innocence.

“What a thing to accuse me of?” he cried.

Tink knew from his attitude that he was guilty.

“So you did,” he said grimly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nastee said haughtily.

“Nastee, you’re lying,” Tink snapped. “You’ve joined the gremlins and you intend to sabotage the lieutenant’s reconnaissance plane, don’t you?”

Nastee turned on him, scowling.

“And supposing I am,” he snarled. “What difference does that make to you?”

Jing looked at him in shocked horror.

“I don’t believe you could be that bad, Nastee,” she said.

“Nastee,” Tink said, “you’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble if you join the gremlins. You know they’re an unsociable, unreliable, treacherous group of little imps.”

“I like them,” Nastee said. “They’re grouchy all the time. They never laugh or smile. They make people unhappy. They’re wonderful.”

“They sound dreadful,” Jing said.

“How long have you been a member?” Tink asked.

“About three weeks,” Nastee said.

“And you came here about three weeks ago,” Tink said keenly. “You were assigned to this job by the gremlins, weren’t you? You came here in advance to spy on the lieutenant, didn’t you?”

“Sure I did,” Nastee said.

“You ungrateful little imp,” Tink said disgustedly.

Nastee looked angry. His little face was screwed into a frown.

“I don’t care what names you call me,” he said spitefully. “I’ve got a job I like and I’m going to keep it. And I won’t have you two around getting in the way of my work.”

With a last indignant glance he swung over the edge of the easel and slid down one of its legs to the floor. He crossed the floor to the open window and climbed to the ledge. He looked back at them and laughed bitterly. Then he was gone.

“Oh, Tink,” Jing cried, “what are we going to do? This nice young man will be killed if we don’t stop Nastee and the gremlins.” She looked away from Tink to the young girl who was sighing happily in the lieutenant’s arms, and her eyes clouded with tears. “And that would break this poor girl’s heart.”

“I know, I know,” Tink said irritably. “We’ve got to do something, but what?”

“Couldn’t we warn the lieutenant to be on his guard?” Tink suggested hopefully.

Tink shook his head.

“There’s only one thing to do,” he said finally. He swung around and faced Jing. His little eyes were gleaming with determination. “It may be dangerous, but it’s our only chance. Are you game?”

“Oh, yes,” Jing cried.

“We’re going with the lieutenant,” Tink snapped. “We’ll go along as his bodyguard, and I’d just like to see Nastee or the gremlins start anything.”

Jing clapped her hands together excitedly.

“Oh, Tink,” she cried, “you’re wonderful!”

Tink smiled modestly.

“That thought has often occurred to me,” he said...

The London airport from which Lieutenant Tom Diggles was taking off, was a large, dark area, with only a few blue landing lights visible.

Tink and Jing arrived there a few days after they had decided to help the young lieutenant. They had heard nothing of Nastee since that time, and Tink knew in this case, that silence meant trouble.

They found the reconnaissance ship that the lieutenant was flying and went aboard. Tink left Jing in the cabin while he searched the ship. He looked thoroughly, diving into every nook and cranny but he found no evidence of Nastee or the gremlins.

“Everything looks all right,” he said, when he returned to the cabin. “Maybe Nastee gave up his idea.”

“I think we’d better go along, just in case,” Jing said.

They were waiting in the cabin, sitting on a rheostat of the dashboard when Lieutenant Diggles came aboard. He was wearing his heavy, fur-lined leather flying togs and his face was serious as he rapidly checked the instruments.

The plane was a two-engined ship with a large cabin, and a special turret in the top for the cameraman. He arrived a few minutes later, a lanky redhead, carrying a heavy camera under his arm.

“Hi, Tom,” he greeted the pilot.

“Hello, Red,” Tom Diggles smiled. “Got everything you’ll need?”

Red patted his camera affectionately and said, “With this baby I don’t need anything else. If you could manage to fly over Hitler’s mountain resort I’ll tell you what he’s having for breakfast.”

“If I ever fly over Berchtesgaden, I hope it’s not to take pictures,” Tom said.

“Me, too,” Red said fervently. “I’d like to be sitting right alongside the bombardier, watching those block busters land right in Mr. Hitler’s lap.”

Tom looked out the glazed window and then said, “Well, I guess we’re ready to go.” He signalled with his hand to the ground crew and a few seconds later, the great motors thundered to life. The ship trembled for an instant and then was rolling smoothly down the runway, gathering speed with every foot.

The lieutenant pulled the stick back slowly and the ship lifted into the air, dropped momentarily and then soared upward again in a steady climb.

Tom grinned at Red and, over the noise of the motor, said, “We’re on our way.”

Red closed his fist and pointed his thumb in the air with a wink.

The lieutenant turned back to his controls, and Tink and Jing settled down for the trip.

“How long do you think we’ll be gone?” Jing asked.

“Just a few hours,” Tink said. “We’ll cross the channel, fly over France and then return. Shouldn’t take long at all.”

They flew steadily for several moments gaining altitude, and then they saw the wide, bright ribbon of the Thames gleaming beneath them, beautifully silvered with moonlight.

When they reached about thirty-five thousand feet the lieutenant levelled off and headed directly east. The cabin was cold, and despite the automatic oxygen device the air was almost too thin to breathe.

Jing hugged herself and nestled closer to Tink.

“I don’t like this,” she said through chattering teeth.

Lieutenant Diggles glanced at his instruments and a worried frown settled on his face. He joggled a small switch several times, then shoved his goggles up to his forehead and glanced out the window.

“What’s the matter?” Red asked.

The lieutenant shrugged helplessly.

“Can’t tell for sure. We’re losing altitude. I think the de-icers are on the blink. It’s okay unless we run into real weather, then we’ll be out of luck.”

Jing looked at Tink and raised her slim eyebrows significantly.

“Are you thinking what I am?” she asked.

Tink nodded thoughtfully.

“I think it’s about time for me to go to work,” he said. “If the de-icers on this plane aren’t working, I’ll bet anything Nastee’s behind the trouble.”

“Where are the de-icers?” Jing asked.

“Out on the wings,” Tink said.

“Well how’re you going to get out there?”

“Very simple,” Tink said. “Watch.”

He scampered up the instrument panel and jumped into the breech of the machine gun. Using all of his strength he dislodged a cartridge and crawled into the small dark shell chamber. Then he slipped into the barrel of the gun and crawled along its two-foot length until he reached its open end.

The cold, lashing wind that whipped past him almost tore his head off, but he fought his way on, until he was able to drop from the gun to the cowling and then to the broad surface of the wing, dangerously slick from its coating of ice.

He ran along the wing until he reached the de-icer apparatus and there, crouching in the lee of the equipment, he found Nastee, curled up in a small, cold ball.

His eyes were closed and his teeth were chattering. And he was oblivious to everything except his own discomfort.

Tink kicked him with his foot.

“What’s the idea?” he demanded.

Nastee blinked his frost-laden eyes open and stared with incredulous amazement at Tink.

“How’d you get here?” he sputtered.

“That’s beside the point,” Tink said. “What have you done to the de-icers on this plane?”

In spite of his frozen discomfort, Nastee managed to smile triumphantly.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” he said. He chuckled gleefully. “I suppose we’ll be forced to land pretty soon, won’t we?”

Tink shook his head, then smiled at Nastee’s bewilderment.

“No,” he said, “we won’t have to land. I just heard the pilot say he can get along without the di-icers if the weather doesn’t get worse. And that seems rather unlikely.”

It was Nastee’s turn to chortle.

“That’s what you think,” he laughed. “But I just talked to a gremlin scout and he said we’re heading into a storm within fifty miles. And the temperature is due to drop about fifty degrees.”

“You’re lying,” Tink said.

“All right, then,” Nastee said smugly, “there’s nothing to worry about if I’m lying. You just go on back to the cabin and relax.”

Tink knew that Nastee wasn’t lying. And he knew that if they flew into bad weather, their plane would be forced to drop within range of German anti-aircraft guns.

“You always think you’re so smart,” Nastee jeered. “I suppose you came along to stop me from doing my work. Well what are you going to do?”

Tink stared angrily at Nastee.

“I don’t know, yet,” he snapped, “But get this; this plane isn’t going to crash in France!”

Nastee laughed spitefully.

“We’ll see about that,” he said.

Chapter III

Tink returned to the cabin and told Jing what had happened.

“But what can you do?” Jing asked, when he finished. “If we’re flying into a cold storm and the de-icers aren’t working, we’ll be shot down, won’t we?” Tink nodded somberly.

“We wouldn’t have a chance,” he said.

“Could you fix the de-icers?” Jing asked.

“No. I don’t know anything about them. And you can bet that Nastee’s done a thorough job of wrecking them.”

“But we’ve got to do something,” Jing said worriedly.

Tink snapped his fingers suddenly He glanced up at the lieutenant’s lean, serious features and then his eyes shifted to the dashboard. There was a speculative expression on his face.

Jing watched him anxiously.

“Did you think of something to do?” she asked.

“I think I’ve got it,” Tink said. “We’ve got to dodge that storm or we don’t have a chance.”

Jing’s slim eyebrows drew together in a frown.

“But how can you do that?” she asked.

“We’re flying east now,” Tink said, speaking quickly. “In a few more minutes, we’ll hit the storm. Before we do I’ve got to make our pilot swing south. That will take us out of the storm area.” He glanced at the dashboard again, a bright, beaming light in his eyes.

Jing shook her head helplessly.

“But how are you going to do that?” she asked.

“Watch,” Tink said quietly.

He crawled across the dial-pitted surface of the dashboard until he reached the compass, and then he went to work, his tiny dexterous fingers working with swift sureness. When he crept back to Jing’s side there was a pleased expression of triumph on his merry face.

“What did you do?” Jing asked breathlessly.

“Wait and see,” Tink said.

Lieutenant Tom Diggles was glancing out the window, squinting into the steadily thickening snow flurries that eddied about the plane, and there was a worried frown on his face. The frown deepened when he turned to the temperature gauge.

“I think we’re in for it,” he said to Red over his shoulder. “This weather is thickening and it’s getting colder. We’re dropping pretty fast.” He shook his head bitterly. “If only those damn de-icers weren’t on the blink.”

“Don’t blame our ground crews,” Red said, shaking his head ominously.

“This looks like the gremlins’ work.”

“Nonsense,” the lieutenant said irritably. “That’s just a childish superstition.”

“Don’t bet on that,” Red said gloomily. “I’ve seen some mighty queer things happen up here that weren’t caused by any human factor.”

“Rubbish,” the lieutenant said.

He glanced down again at the dashboard and suddenly the expression on his face changed to one of complete astonishment.

“Well I’ll be damned!” he said loudly-

“What’s the matter?” Red said, leaving his turret and coming up to the lieutenant’s side.

The lieutenant was still staring at the dashboard with bewildered incredulity.

“I should be taken out and tossed in the Thames,” he said finally. He pointed emphatically at the compass. “Look at that! I’m a full ninety degrees off course. No wonder we’re heading into blizzard weather. We’re going straight north.”

“No!” Red said dazedly.

He stared at the compass, his lean features blank with astonishment.

“But how could that happen?” he said.

“Search me,” the lieutenant said sourly. “I guess I’m just the world’s worst navigator.” He kicked the right rudder and moved the stick slowly, bringing the ship about in a sharp right angle bank. The needle of the compass swung around to “E” and he straightened the plane out.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now we’re on course again and with a little luck we’ll flank this heavy weather.”

Tink was smiling triumphantly at Jing.

“You see?” he said. “We’re out of trouble.”

“But I don’t see how,” Jing said.

“Simple. I threw the compass off ninety degrees. We were heading east but the compass showed north. When the lieutenant corrected the position to east we actually turned due south.” So, Tink grinned, “we’re heading south now, toward warm weather. The plane won’t need de-icers in a little while.”

Jing clapped her hands together with pleasure.

“Why, that’s wonderful!” she cried.

Tink smiled modestly. “It was clever,” he admitted with only a shade of reluctance.

But an hour later, as the plane continued to wing its way south at high speed, his cheerfulness faded slightly. The weather was warmer but soupy and thick and the lieutenant was flying on instruments, getting farther off course every minute.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Tink confessed worriedly to Jing. “I don’t know where we are. And the lieutenant still thinks he’s flying on course. We may run out of gas and be too far from London to return.”

The lieutenant was scowling anxiously at his instruments and finally he turned to Red and said, “Something’s a bit wrong. I think we’re off course. I’m going to drop down and see if we can’t pick out a landmark.”

The plane started down through the dense massed clouds, the altimeter needle swinging dizzily as the plane slanted groundward.

Red’s loud incredulous voice suddenly broke the tense silence.

“It ain’t possible!” he cried. “My eyes are playing tricks on me.”

“What’s the matter?” the lieutenant demanded.

“We’re over water!” Red cried shrilly.

“That’s impossible,” the lieutenant snapped.

“Maybe so,” Red said dolefully, “but if that stuff below us ain’t water, it’s a darn good imitation.”

The lieutenant straightened the plane out and then scrambled to the side and peered down. He swallowed abruptly.

“You’re right,” he said in a shaken voice. “It is water.”

“Then where the hell are we?” Red asked helplessly. “This sure ain’t Europe unless they been having a lot of rain.”

The lieutenant was staring at” a mistily outlined shore line, and when he turned to Red, his face was pale.

“Red,” he said, in an odd, brittle, voice, “we’re over the Mediterranean, heading for Africa!”

“What!” Red stared at the lieutenant and his adam’s-apple bobbed rhythmically. He pointed feebly at the dashboard. “We can’t be!” he cried. “The compass says we’re heading east.”

“The compass in on the fritz,” the lieutenant said tersely.

“Oh my God!” Red said weakly. “More gremlin trouble.”

“Stop babbling about gremlins,” the lieutenant said. “This is a mechanical breakdown, nothing else. And we’re in a mighty tough spot.”

“Well what’re we going to do?” Red asked.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” the lieutenant answered. “We haven’t enough gas to make London, and if we return to the French coast, we’ll be captured and dumped into a German prison camp. We’ve got to try for Africa and hope we can find an allied airfield to land on.”

“Yeah, but there’s lots of Nazi airfields in Africa,” Red said, “especially along the coast. How’re we goin’ to tell one from another?”

“Let’s worry about that when we get there,” the lieutenant said.

Tink listened to this conversation in silent misery. He turned to Jing with sagging shoulders.

“I’ve certainly made a mess of things,” he said dolefully.

“That’s no way to feel,” Jing said. “You saved them from the storm, didn’t you? It isn’t your fault that this other trouble came along.”

“I know,” Tink said miserably. “But that’s not much consolation.”

The sun was edging an orange shoulder over the horizon when they sighted the ragged coastline of Africa, and after a few more minutes they were able to make out the camouflaged site of an airfield.

“Maybe luck is with us,” Red said jubilantly. “That looks like home-sweet-home to me.”

“Maybe,” the lieutenant said grimly. “If it isn’t, we’re too low on gas to do much scouting around.”

They headed in over the airport at about five thousand feet, coming down out of the early sun to keep out of sight as long as possible.

“I can see some fighters warming up,” Red said excitedly.

“Take a good look,” the lieutenant said. “Are they ours?”

“Can’t tell yet. Drop in a little closer.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant said. He shoved the stick forward slowly. “But make up your mind pretty fast. We’ll be in their laps soon.”

Red was standing in the turret peering downward, his eyes narrowed to thin slits as he strained to make out the insignia of the planes on the ground.

“I think I got ’em,” he said.

“What’s the verdict?”

“Start climbing,” Red said tersely, turning from the turret. His voice was dull and flat as he said, “They’re Focke-Wulf, 109’s!”

“Judas Priest!” the lieutenant whispered softly.

He jerked the stick back into his stomach and gunned the ship, but there was an ominous sputter from the left engine as the plane took the extra gas.

“We’re about through,” he said. “Did they see us?”

“Can’t tell,” Red said. “They’re still on the ground. But it’s a cinch they heard us.”

The lieutenant nursed the plane to eight thousand feet, but then the left engine conked, and a few seconds later, the powerful throbbing of the second engine began to fade to a labored cough.

“We’ll have to land,” the lieutenant said. “Can’t do much about it. It’s the law of gravity.”

They slanted down in a long sweeping dive that carried them toward a distant fringe of vegetation that marked the beginning of the trackless jungle wastes.

“I always wanted to do a little big game hunting,” Red said, and his voice sounded hollow and loud in the unnatural quietness of the cabin.

“Then this is your chance,” the lieutenant said.

At three thousand feet they were over the green carpet of jungle, heading inland at a dead speed of almost three hundred miles an hour.

“We’re going to hit pretty hard, aren’t we?” Red asked.

The lieutenant nodded. “Pretty hard. I’ll try and break it as much as possible with a couple of short climbs, but it’s going to be pretty hard.”

Ten minutes later, the fuselage of the plane was sweeping over the tops of the trees.

Tink took Jing’s hand and held it tightly.

“We’ll be all right,” he said, “and maybe we’ll save the lieutenant and Red.”

The lieutenant suddenly stood up and moved quickly toward the tail of the plane.

“Come on, Red,” he said, speaking quickly. “This is it.”

A moment later, the plane scraped the tops of the highest trees, twisted slightly and then plowed straight ahead into a dense mass of foliage that snapped under its speed with a hissing scrape. It plunged groundward, sweeping a clean wide swash through the underbrush and finally settling with a rocking crash against the yielding mass of tangled jungle vines and foliage.

Brilliantly plumaged birds wheeled from nearby trees and circled the spot with high piercing screams of terror, before streaking away into the bright dawn. A curious unnatural silence gradually settled over the wreckage of the once-trim plane...

Chapter IV

Tink held Jing tightly until the plane had come to its rocking swaying stop, then he looked down anxiously at the young lieutenant sprawled on the floor.

The young man wasn’t hurt seriously. He had been thrown to the floor with the impact of the crash, but he was breathing, and even as Tink watched he raised himself with one hand and shook his head groggily.

The cameraman, Red, was lying farther toward the rear of the plane and his eyes were closed and his face was a deathly white. Tink saw that his left leg was buckled under him at a twisted, unnatural angle.

The lieutenant crawled slowly to his feet and stood upright, swaying slightly, his hands pressed to his forehead.

“Is he all right?” Jing whispered.

“He seems to be,” Tink said, “but the other one has a broken leg, I think.”

The lieutenant knelt beside Red and felt his pulse. Then, with a relieved expression on his face, he stood up and stumbled toward the door. He opened it with difficulty, and climbed down to the thick, soft carpeting of jungle underbrush.

The plane had fortunately landed in a small clearing and this had saved it from complete destruction. If it had crashed against one of the towering trees that bordered the clearing it would have been battered into a total wreck.

Tink and Jing followed the lieutenant outside.

“I wonder where Nastee is?” Jing asked.

“We probably won’t see much of him,” Tink said. “He’ll be smart enough to keep out of my way for a while.”

The young lieutenant staggered slowly to the middle of the clearing and looked helplessly about with bleak eyes. He put a hand to his forehead and shook his head slowly.

“He doesn’t look very good,” Jing said. “Isn’t there something we could do for him?”

The lieutenant turned slowly and started back for the plane but he hadn’t taken half a dozen steps before he staggered and dropped to one knee. He made an effort to rise, but his legs gave beneath him and he fell slowly forward on his face. He lay on the rotting floor of the jungle, motionless and inert, and for an instant Tink thought he was dead. But then he saw the slow, uneven rise and fall of his chest and he knew he still lived.

“Oh, the poor man,” Jing cried. “We’ve got to do something for him.”

They started across the clearing, but suddenly, to their left, a mighty rumbling roar sounded, and they froze in their tracks. There was a heavy rustling in the tangled underbrush that enclosed the little clearing, and then a great head appeared over the top of the brush, its great mouth opened wide and another thunderous roar rocked the ground.

Jing clung to Tink, trembling, as the underbrush parted and a mighty lion stalked slowly into the clearing, its red eyes intent on the motionless figure of the man lying on the ground.

“What is it?” she asked fearfully.

“I don’t know,” Tink said. “It’s awful big, isn’t it?”

The lion paused for a second on the edge of the clearing, its tail lashing slowly and its little eyes flicking alertly from side to side. Then it trotted slowly across the clearing toward the lieutenant’s sprawled body.

“Come on,” Tink said urgently.

“What are you going to do?” Jing said, and her voice was almost a wail.

“I–I don’t know,” Tink said. For once in his life he was completely stumped. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for a situation like this, but he knew he couldn’t just stand by and watch the lieutenant be devoured by this great beast.

He started across the clearing running as fast as he could, but the lion reached the lieutenant before him. It paused for an instant sniffing the ground and then it put one huge paw on the lieutenant’s shoulder and turned him over. A deep rumble sounded in his throat and his tail lashed ominously as its little red eyes stared into the man’s white, still face.

Tink and Jing reached the lieutenant’s side and Tink felt his courage deserting him as he stared incredulously at the size of the monstrous beast.

He took an involuntary step backward and something sharp jabbed painfully into his back.

“Ouch!” he cried.

He looked around and saw that he had bumped into a long, shiny thorn. He rubbed his back ruefully, and then a sudden idea occurred to him. He pulled the thorn from the ground and regarded it with speculative eyes. It was almost twice as long as he was, and its thin hard point was as sharp as a needle.

Jing was watching him anxiously.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Tink’s jaw was set firmly.

“We’re going to attack!” he said grimly.

“With thorns?” Jing asked incredulously.

“It’s all we’ve got,” Tink said. “But,” he added, rubbing his back tenderly, “I think it might be enough.”

He trotted toward the lion, and when he reached the beast’s massive forepaw he extended the thorn like a lance and drove forward, head lowered, with all his strength.

The needle-sharp point dug into the lion’s tender paw with all of Tink’s weight behind it.

The lion roared and lifted the paw into the air. His little eyes flickered with rage. Jing had decided on a rear attack and as the lion stood irresolutely on three feet, glaring in baffled anger about the clearing, she drove a thorn into his hind paw.

The lion wheeled, snarling wildly.

His long tail lashed about and there were flecks of murderous rage in the close-set, red eyes. Tink backed slightly away and then dashed in again, imbedding the thorn in the same spot he had first attacked.

The lion turned and its giant paw flicked out blindly, tearing the thorn from Tink’s hand. The impetus of the blow dumped Tink to the ground a dozen feet away. He crawled to his feet, dazed and bruised, and limped back to the attack.

But the fight was over. Jing’s second thrust drove in between the lion’s claws and with a frightful roar the great beast bounded from the clearing.

Tink hurried to Jing’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.

Jing was smiling widely.

“I feel wonderful,” she said. Her face sobered as she glanced at the young lieutenant who was stirring slightly. “What are we going to do with him?” she asked.

“I think he’s all right,” Tink said. “He just passed out from shock. When he comes to, he’ll feel better.”

The lieutenant opened his eyes slowly and then struggled to a sitting position. He passed a hand dazedly over his forehead.

“I must’ve blacked out,” he muttered. “Childish thing to do.” A frown creased his forehead. “I must’ve had a nightmare. I can still hear something ringing in my ears like a lion’s roar.”

He crawled slowly to his feet and glanced around.

“Just nerves, I guess,” he muttered. “There’s probably not a lion within a hundred miles.”

Jing glanced at Tink and smiled. The lieutenant returned to the plane and came out a few minutes later, carrying Red’s unconscious form. He stretched the young cameraman on the ground in the shade of the plane and loosened the tight collar. While he was holding a canteen of water to Red’s lips the cameraman stirred and shook his head weakly from side to side. The water trickled down his neck.

“What’s the idea?” he said, his voice a feeble whisper. But there was a faint grin at the edges of his pain-stiffened mouth.

“How do you feel?” the lieutenant asked quietly.

“Not so hot. I’d be better if you’d stop trying to drown me.”

The lieutenant smiled. “Just saving you the bother of your Saturday night bath, that’s all.”

Red glanced around the clearing. “Let’s cut the comedy,” he said. “Do we have any chance of getting out of here? Don’t soften the blow. If we’re sunk I can take it.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Can’t say, yet. We may be within range of allied reconnaissance planes. If so, we’ve got a fair chance of being spotted and picked up.”

“Doesn’t sound too good to me,” Red said. “That ‘if’ is a little too large. Now, how about my leg?”

“Is it bothering you much?”

Red grinned whitely.

“Not much.”

“I can set it,” the lieutenant said. “And a couple of these saplings around here will make fine splints. So you haven’t got a thing to worry about.”

“Wonderful,” Red said. “And how much food and water have we got.”

“Plenty,” the lieutenant said. “Anyway,” he added wryly, “we’ve got some.”

“Fine,” Red said. “Imagine! I thought we were in a tough spot and it turns out to be a flyer’s Valhalla. Better get busy on this leg, Doctor. I’ve got a date with a blonde tonight.”

“Right away,” the lieutenant said.

The two leprechauns had crept close to listen, and now Jing turned worriedly to Tink and said, “We’ve got to do something to help these poor men. They won’t be able to stand it here more than a few days.”

“That’s right,” Tink said, “but I don’t know what to do. Do you think we could find our way to an allied air field?” He shook his head and answered his own question. “No, that wouldn’t work.”

“How long do you think they can last here?” Jing asked.

Tink looked up at the sky and shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said moodily. “Well, we simply can’t disappoint that poor girl,” Jing said heatedly. “She’s expecting her lieutenant back and I intend to see that he gets back!”

But four days later, Jing’s confident resolve was fading with each passing hour. On the first day, an allied plane had flown overhead, but apparently the pilot hadn’t seen the lieutenant’s frantic signaling. Two days had passed since then, and there was no evidence of any rescue party.

“Oh, Tink,” Jing said desperately, “we simply must do something!”

“But what?” Tink said. He glanced across the clearing to the small lean-to which the lieutenant had built for Red. The cameraman was resting fairly comfortably in its shade, his splinted leg propped up on a pillow of moss. But the food and water situation was becoming critical. Tink knew that the lieutenant hadn’t been eating or drinking his share of the rations, but had given them to Red. Still there was only a crumb or two and a few drops of water left.

It was evening of the fourth day when they heard the sudden, out-of-place sound of a motor reverberating through the drowsy stillness of the jungle. And a few minutes later, they could hear the dry crackle of underbrush and the bouncing, jogging noise of a truck as it plodded its way through the tangled trail.

The lieutenant appeared at the door of the plane, his face alight with hope. Red crawled out of his lean-to and waved joyfully at him.

“Pack my grips,” he yelled. “I think I’m checking out of this hotel.”

A second later, the underbrush parted and the hood of a gray truck broke into the clearing. The truck stopped and the powerful cough of the motor faded into silence. A slim figure under a crash helmet slid from behind the wheel and dropped to the ground.

“Hello there, Lieutenant Diggles,” a light voice called.

The lieutenant was staring at the slim driver with dazed, incredulous eyes.

“It’s a mirage,” he said hoarsely. “If I shut ray eyes it’ll go away.”

“No it won’t. The air corps maintenance is a lot more substantial than you think,” the light, clear voice said.

The driver pulled off the huge, cowled crash helmet and lustrous dark hair fell down in long waves. A pair of smiling eyes laughed at the lieutenant.

“Ann Masterson at your service, Lieutenant Diggles,” the overalled driver said.

Chapter V

Jing smiled happily as the lieutenant vaulted from the door of the plane and ran across the clearing to the girl’s side.

“Darling!” he cried. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her impulsively.

Ann put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him slightly away.

“That should convince you,” she laughed.

Red whistled approvingly.

“Lady,” he yelled, “I don’t believe in you, either. Come on over here and convince these poor old eyes of mine.”

“And he doesn’t mean eyes,” the lieutenant said. He grinned and shook her gently. “Come on now, honey, give! How’d you get here?”

“It’s very simple,” Ann said. “The day after you left I received my orders, transferring me to an allied air base here in Tunisia. This was my first job. One of our reconnaissance planes spotted you two days ago and I was sent out with supplies and equipment. Our base is only about twenty-five miles from here, but I was the only one there the colonel could spare for this trip. It wasn’t a bit dangerous, because all of this territory is controlled by the Allies and we have the entire region under constant aerial reconnaissance.

I’ve been in radio contact with the base since I left this morning, so they know I found you.”

She glanced at the plane with competent, experienced eyes.

“How are the chances of flying out?”

“Fair,” the lieutenant said. “Provided you brought along the right parts, I can do the repairs.”

“If it’s a chance,” the girl said, “I won’t take it. I can pile you all in the truck and have you back at the base in eight hours.”

The lieutenant glanced in Red’s direction and then lowered his voice.

“We’ll have to fly him out,” he said. “He couldn’t stand eight hours bouncing around in the back of a truck.”

“I heard that,” Red suddenly cried belligerently, “and it’s a lot of nonsense. I’m not going to risk everybody’s neck just so I can be flown out of here on a rubber mattress. We’ll go back in the truck.”

“We’ll go back as I see fit,” the lieutenant snapped. “I’m in command here.”

“I’m sure I’ve got everything you’ll need,” the girl said. “But I don’t know if I’ve got enough gas. I’ve got some, but it will be barely enough to get us from here to the base if we take the plane.”

“Well, that’s all we need,” the lieutenant said.

“Shall we get to work on the repairs right away?” Arm said.

The lieutenant ran a hand through his dark hair and his teeth flashed whitely against the black stubble of his four-day’s beard.

“Dou you bring along anything to eat?” he asked wistfully.

“Why, certainly,” Ann smiled. “I have some canned broth, sandwiches, a thermos of coffee and even a pint of whiskey.”

“Stop it!” Red begged, holding both hands to his ears. “I can’t bear to hear those things mentioned.”

“I think we’d better eat first and then tackle our repair job,” the lieutenant said.

Tink and Jing went aboard the plane while the lieutenant, Ann and Red were eating, and in one of the dark corners of the cabin Tink stumbled unexpectedly upon Nastee.

Nastee crouched in the corner as Tink stared down at him, hands resting belligerently on his hips.

“So,” he said, “This is where you’ve been hiding.”

“I haven’t been hiding,” Nastee said. He glanced warily from Tink to Jing. “You aren’t mad at me, are you?” His eyes met Jing’s in a mute plea for sympathy. “I froze my left ear out on that wing, you know.”

“It serves you just right,” Jing said. “Aren’t you ashamed of all the trouble you’ve caused these poor people?” Nastee started to reply, but Tink cut him short.

“Nastee isn’t ashamed of anything he did,” he said. “But he’d lie and say he was, to save his own skin. You’re lucky everything’s turned out all right or you’d have me on your neck for life, because this time I’m really mad.”

“Did everything turn out all right?” Nastee asked cautiously.

“Yes,” Tink said grimly. “A unit from an allied field just arrived with food and supplies. The plane will be ready to take-off in a day or so.”

Nastee looked humbly at the floor. “That’s good,” he said, sighing heavily.

Cut it out,” Tink said disguestedly. “Your acting isn’t impressing anyone.” He turned to Jing decisively. “While we have him here I think we ought to make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble. Let’s lock him in the machine gun breech until we reach the allied field.”

But Jing’s eyes had softened as Nastee looked pleadingly at her.

“I think this time he’s learned his lesson, Tink,” she said. “Let’s give him another chance.”

“All right,” Tink said grimly, “but no more monkey business or into the gun breech you go.”

“I’ll be good,” Nastee said humbly.

“I doubt it,” Tink said.

“You’re just too callous, Tink,” Jing said, coming to Nastee’s defense.

Tink shrugged helplessly.

“Maybe the lieutenant was right,” he muttered.

“About what?” Jing asked.

“About women in war time,” Tink said. “They should be home baking bread while the men do the fighting.”

Jing sniffed. “You’re just as vain and unreasonable as all men.”

“All right,” Tink sighed, “let’s don’t argue about it.”

They left the plane and started across the clearing where the lieutenant and the girl were packing away the remains of their lunch.

The jungle was quiet and there was only the whisper of a breeze moving the brush. Night was dropping quickly.

“It seems as if we’re on another planet,” Ann said, glancing about at the brooding darkness of the jungle. “It doesn’t seem possible that there’s another human within a thousand miles of us.”

A twig snapped suddenly at the edge of the clearing. The lieutenant looked up quickly, his lean face tense.

His hand started for the revolver at his belt, but a harsh voice suddenly said, “Please, do not move.”

The brush parted and two uniformed figures moved into the clearing. Each held a German Luger in his right hand, and the muzzles of the guns were pointed unwaveringly at the three Americans.

Chapter VI

“Germans!” Jing whispered tensely in Tink’s ear.

Tink took her hand in his and held it tightly.

The Germans stopped a dozen feet from the Americans. Their breeches and leather jackets were stained and torn, and their eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. But the hands that held the guns were steady as rocks. They both wore wings over the sharp peaks of their garrison caps.

“Permit me,” one of them spoke, his voice harsh and mocking. “Captain Myers, of the Luftwaffe, at your service.” He gestured negligently to the man who stood beside him. “Oberleutnant Schmidt, my navigator. You are Americans?”

Lieutenant Diggles stood up slowly. “Yes, we are Americans,” he said. “We crashed here a week ago. My cameraman’s leg was broken.”

“What a coincidence,” the German captain said. “We too crashed, but many miles from here. We are on our way to the coast. This territory is temporarily in British hands and isn’t too healthy for our Nordic blood.”

He glanced at the plane and then back to Lieutenant Diggles.

“Can your ship be repaired?”

He intercepted the warning glance the lieutenant flashed at Ann, and smiled.

“I see,” he said. He looked at the gray service truck that was parked on the opposite side of the clearing. “Your ship can be repaired. I gather the young lady came here in the truck from some nearby allied field with the necessary equipment. How convenient.”

“What do you mean?” Lieutenant Diggles said.

“We will need your plane to make our escape,” the captain said. “Frankly our chances of working our way through this territory to the coast are not good. But we can fly to one of your bases from here in the matter of an hour or so. Tomorrow we will repair your plane. And now we will eat.”

Ann angrily dropped the large tin food receptacle at their feet.

“There,” she said, “with all my love. “You’d take it anyway.”

“Quite right, my dear,” the captain murmured. “We Germans discovered long ago that only fools and weaklings ever ask for anything.”

He looked steadily at Ann until a slow angry flush colored the girl’s cheeks.

“How lovely you are, my dear,” the captain said, bowing slightly. “This may be the start of a beautiful friendship.” His voice suddenly hardened again as he swung on Lieutenant Diggles. “We need sleep. My comrade, Oberleutnant Schmidt, will watch while I rest, and I will watch while he rests. If you have any foolish ideas of resisting, get rid of them before they cause you trouble. I warn you, if you make a move we will shoot the girl first.”

He sat down on the ground beside the container and opened it greedily.

“While we are eating,” he said, smiling gently, “I think you had better gather some moss and make me a nice comfortable bed.” He gestured impatiently with his gun as the American lieutenant hesitated, his face hardening angrily.

“You had better do as I say,” the captain murmured, “or I might find it necessary to put a bullet through one of your arms. That wouldn’t be pleasant. Quickly!”

He chuckled contentedly and dug into the food container as the American lieutenant began to gather armfuls of moss and spread them on the ground.

The next morning, under the armed supervision of the German officers, the job of repairing the plane was begun. The American lieutenant had prepared an inventory of the damage and the type and number of replacement parts that would be needed.

Captain Myers studied the list for a while and then ordered the lieutenant to get busy.

“And remember,” he added. “I am completely familiar with these machines, so don’t make any foolish attempt to sabotage the plane. And I also know how long each job should take, so I will not tolerate any stalling. Now get busy! We intend to take-off before dark tonight. Oberleutnant Schmidt will help you and also see to it that you don’t do anything foolish.”

All through the heat of the day Lieutenant Diggles worked on the plane, replacing damaged parts, inspecting every instrument; and the oberleutnant dogged his heels, watching his every move with small, suspicious eyes.

Finally the lieutenant straightened up from the undercarriage where he had tightened several loose bolts, and wiped his streaming face with a grease rag.

“That does it,” he said, and he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

Captain Myers was lying in the shade watching the American work.

“Excellent,” he said heartily. “Are you sure that everything is in good shape?”

“Perfectly sure,” Tom Diggles snapped.

The captain nodded contentedly.

“Now, if you’ll be so kind as to clear away the brush from the clearing and swing the plane about, we won’t impose on your hospitality any longer. One other thing,” he added, with a soft little smile, “if the plane isn’t in excellent working order it will be most unfortunate for the young lady.”

“What do you mean?” Tom demanded.

The German captain flicked a speck of dust from his breeches before replying.

“Because,” he murmured, “she is coming with us.” He smiled. “She looks as if she might be amusing under different circumstances. So you see it would be a great pity if the plane wasn’t in excellent condition. Because if it crashes, she will crash also. Are you sure now that there isn’t something you’ve overlooked? Some little detail which just escaped your mind?”

“I said the plane was ready to go,” the young American lieutenant told him frostily, “and I meant it.”

“I’m quite sure you did,” Captain Myers smiled, “but still the best of us are sometimes forgetful.”

“What about my cameraman?” Tom asked. “That leg of his needs medical attention badly. Will you take him along too?”

The captain shook his head.

“I’m not interested in his condition,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would be,” Tom said grimly. “You may get away with this Captain,” he said, and his voice was as hard and cold as ice, “but if we ever meet again I think you’ll regret what you are doing.”

“I admire your sense of the dramatic,” Captain Myers smiled, “but it is extremely unlikely that we will ever meet again. For when we take-off from this place you will be bound securely to one of these trees. It’s only a logical precaution; you must see that. But after we leave there won’t be anyone left to set you free, so you will undoubtedly have a nice long wait before anyone happens along this way. The chances are that some hungry animal with no discrimination will find you a satisfying meal. But it will have to be very hungry before it will eat an American.”

He leaned back, smiling at his joke. “Now get busy, my young friend, before I decide to shoot you immediately. Your usefulness to me is over, but I enjoy seeing you clear away rubble, and slave like a stupid mule under my orders. That is quite satisfying to me, but I will forego that satisfaction and kill you quickly if you don’t get busy.”

In an hour’s time the American lieutenant had cleared a section of the ground and, with Oberleutnant Schmidt’s help, had swung the plane about to face it.

Captain Myers got to his feet then and walked across to the lean-to where Ann was changing the dressing on Red’s broken leg.

“You will “not have time to finish that errand of mercy,” he said ironically.

“I understand you are taking me with you,” Ann said evenly.

“That is correct,” the captain said. He smiled and bowed politely. “Don’t look so cold, my dear. In Nazi Germany there can be a great future for a young woman who is both intelligent and beautiful.”

“Listen, you Nazi rat,” Red yelled, “if you lay a hand on her I’ll tear your head from your shoulders.”

The captain clapped his hands together in mock applause.

“Bravo!” he cried. “Spoken like a true American. Full of fury and indignation and stupidity.” He gestured sharply to the oberleutnant.

“We must be leaving,” he said. “See that these two are bound securely.” The oberleutnant worked with methodical speed and thoroughness. He removed the American’s belts, forced them to sit with their backs to thick trees and bound their arms behind them, with swift sure loops of the stout leather.

Red twisted in pain and beads of sweat broke on his forehead. But not a sound passed his tightly locked lips.

Ann watched the scene with hot, dry eyes. Her cheeks were flaming with an anger that was too deep for tears.

“You beasts!” she cried. “You inhuman beasts! You can’t leave these men here to die.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Captain Myers smiled. “You don’t appreciate our philosophy yet. It isn’t that I enjoy doing this, but it is necessary, therefore it must be done. When you have spent some time with me you will better understand our methods and principles.”

“You have none,” Ann cried, in helpless fury. “You’re like jungle beasts masquerading in human form. There isn’t a decent emotion in your body.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” the captain said blandly. “But our method is successful and that is what counts.”

“But how long will it be successful?” the American lieutenant asked quietly, but there was a better anger in his voice. “For every one of us you kill there are a thousand to step forward to take our places. And even the Nazis can’t kill enough to silence every man who is joining the fight against them.”

“I am not interested in these idle discussions,” the captain said. He nodded to the oberleutnant. “You may put the girl aboard now. And it might be a wise idea to bind her also. She is a bit too temperamental to be left loose. She might do something foolish. We must save her from herself.”

The oberleutnant pinioned the girl’s arms behind her before she could make a move, and with his own belt, strapped her elbows tightly to her sides.

He led her to the plane and helped her inside.

When the girl had disappeared into the plane, Jing turned furiously on Tink.

“If you don’t do something, Tink, I’ll never speak to you again,” she blazed.

“I’m trying,” Tink said desperately. He scratched his head anxiously. “Let’s go inside,” he said.

They went aboard the plane. The German oberleutnant had shoved the girl into a chair and was standing at the controls, just in front of her.

“Couldn’t we untie her?” Jing suggested.

“How?” Tink said miserably. “We can’t reach the straps on her elbows. They’re too high.”

The German officer was bent over the controls and Jing looked at him with a sudden speculative gleam in her eyes. She glanced at the small, stout boots that Ann was wearing and then looked up again at the stooped form of the German. And as she made a mental measurement, an odd smile curved her lips.

“Tink,” she said, “I think I’ve got it.”

“Got what?”

“A way to untie the girl.”

“How?” Tink asked excitedly.

“Watch.”

She crept under the chair until she reached the booted feet of the girl. With an inch-long piece of straw in her hand, she raised herself on tip-toe and moved aside the cuff of the girl’s trousers.

Tink watched her in open, undisguised bewilderment.

“What’s the idea?” he asked.

Jing didn’t bother to answer. With a prayerful, beseeching expression on her face, she jabbed the tiny piece of sharp straw against the girl’s bare ankle.

“Ouch!” Ann cried.

Instinctively her foot lashed out and, without deliberate intent on her part, the stout toe of her shoe collided with the most prominently exposed section of the German officer’s anatomy. She hadn’t kicked him purposely. The movement of her foot had been simply a reflexive reaction against a sharp little scratch on her ankle.

Oberleutnant Schmidt straightened with an indignant cry and with both hands clasped the injured section of his body. He swung about and glared angrily at Ann.

“So?” he cried. “You are up to schweinhund American tricks already!”

“I didn’t mean to kick you,” Ann said. “I’m not sorry, of course, but it was quite accidental. And I wish more accidents would turn out so satisfyingly,” she added scathingly.

“We will make sure that no more ‘accidents’ like that happen,” the German snapped.

He grabbed a piece of wire and bound her ankles together. Then he lifted her from the chair and dumped her to the floor.

“Now there will be no more smart tricks,” he cried.

“I can still bite,” Ann said grimly, from the floor, “and all I want is a chance.”

The oberleutant laughed and turned back to the controls, and Ann twisted herself on one side and stared helplessly at the wall of the cabin. And in that position the straps that secured her elbows were touching the floor.

Tink patted Jing solemnly on the shoulder.

“You,” he said, “are a genius.”

“Oh, hurry,” Jing cried. “You can untie her now, can’t you?”

“Sure thing,” Tink said.

He was tugging at the prong of the buckle when Captain Myers climbed aboard and said. “We are ready to leave, Schmidt?”

“Right away,” the oberleutant said. He turned the ignition switch and the smooth, powerful roar of the twin motors was soon reverberating in the cabin.

The captain smiled down at Ann and nudged her with the toe of his boot.

“And how is our spirited and beautiful prisoner?” he asked genially.

“Hurry, Tink!” Jing said pleadingly.

“I’m trying,” he said, through set teeth. But the prong of the buckle was under pressure and he couldn’t budge it.

“Not very talkative, eh?” Captain Myers murmured. “Well, you’ll change that attitude soon enough.”

He turned his back to Ann and nodded to his junior officer.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, “you may take-off. I will take the controls when we get in the air.”

The oberleutnant released the brake and the plane started forward slowly. And at that same instant Tink put all his strength into one last effort and the prong slipped from its hole in the leather and the straps hung loosely on the girl’s arms.

Ann felt the pressure of the straps release and she moved her arms incredulously. She was free! In some miraculous fashion the buckle must have slipped.

She raised herself cautiously to a sitting position. There was no time to remove the wire from ankles; the captain was standing directly in front of her and the gun at his hip was within reach of her hand.

She reached for it, and with one quick motion, jerked it from the holster. The captain spun around, his hand snapping frantically to his hip, but he was too late. He found himself staring into the muzzle of his own gun, held unwaveringly in the hand of a girl who looked as if she would relish shooting the eyes out of his head.

“Tell him to stop the plane!” Ann snapped, and there was no mistaking the grim gesture she made with the gun. She was ready to fire — immediately!

“Schmidt! Stop!” Captain Myers said frantically.

The oberleutnant looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened with sudden incredulous horror as he saw the gun pointing at his head.

He stopped the plane and swung around in the pilot’s seat.

“Don’t shoot!” he said, his lips trembling so that he could hardly get the words out.

“Open the door and get out,” Ann said grimly. “And I wouldn’t advise you to make a run for it.”

The oberleutnant stood up and moved slowly toward the door, but when he passed behind the captain, he suddenly ducked low, slipped to one side and dove for the girl.

She shot him in the right shoulder without changing expression. He fell at her feet, moaning softly.

“I didn’t like doing that,” Ann said quietly to the captain, “but I borrowed a little of your philosophy for the moment. They fight fire with fire in America, and we can learn to fight you with your own tactics if that’s the only way we can exterminate Naziism.”

The captain licked his lips and said nothing.

“Now back up,” the girl said.

When the captain backed away, the girl unwrapped the wire from her ankles with one hand and then stood up, still covering the German with his gun.

“Open the door and step out,” she ordered.

Tink and Jing hugged each other as the captain climbed out of the plane with the girl close behind him, pointing the gun squarely at his head.

Red and the young lieutenant watched the two emerge from the plane with incredulous expressions on their faces.

“I don’t believe it,” Tom Diggles said feebly. “It’s a mirage.”

“You’re still underestimating the air corps maintenance,” Ann said. “We’re pretty substantial.”

Red yelled happily, “That ain’t the half of it. Where’s the other kraut-head?”

“In the plane,” Ann said, as she came to a stop before them. “He’s not feeling awfully good right now.” She jabbed the gun into the captain’s back. “Get down on your knees and untie those two men,” she said.

When the lieutenant climbed to his feet he grinned at the girl.

“Will you pardon me a minute, I’ve got a little job to handle?”

“What, Tom?”

“This,” Tom said grimly.

He swung the German captain around and said, “I told you we might meet again, and I told you you’d regret it.” He stripped off his leather jacket and walked slowly toward the German, his hands swinging loosely at his sides.

“Prepare to get awfully regretful,” he murmured.

“Oh boy,” Red said happily, “this is all I need to make my day complete.

A ring side seat to watch a can of sauerkraut get punched full of holes.”

The captain backed slightly away, his eyes narrowed in his face. He was heavier through the shoulders than the American and he was fully twenty pounds heavier. There was a fleeting expression of triumph on his face as he raised his fists.

“This may be interesting,” he said.

Chapter VII

Tink and Jing settled down contentedly to watch the fight, but after a few minutes their faces were set in worried frowns.

The German, using his greater weight, was driving the American relentlessly back, driving sledge-hammer blows into his face and body with every step.

The lieutenant fought savagely standing toe-to-toe and slugging furiously, but he was forced back steadily under the powerful punches of the German.

“Box him!” Red screamed. “Box him, you fool!”

He almost climbed to his feet in his excitement.

“Jab him, use your left. Who d’ you think you are — Joe Louis?”

The American fought back grimly, desperately, but the terrific punches of the German were sapping his strength. His face was bleeding and his breath was coming in deep, laboring gasps.

The German circled slightly and drove in again, driving the American toward Ann. There was a desperate cunning gleam in the depths of his eyes and his face was a hard mask of hatred.

When he maneuvered the American within a half dozen feet of the girl, he planted himself solidly and snapped across a hard, driving right that sent the lieutenant sprawling to the ground.

Ann swung to watch the lieutenant, a pleading expression in her eyes and, for that second, the German was out of range of the gun in her hand. And that had been his plan.

With a savage cry he lunged for her, his hand grasping for the gun.

Red yelled a frantic warning and the girl spun back, but it was too late. The German was upon her, one powerful arm closing about her waist and drawing her to him, while the other hand grabbed for the gun.

She struggled helplessly in his iron grip.

“Get rid of the gun!” Red yelled.

The German’s hand was inches from her wrist, and there was a gloating expression of triumph on his face as he drew her closer. Ann jerked away from him with every ounce of her strength behind the effort, and hurled the gun into the tangled brush that surrounded the clearing.

With a wild curse the German flung her aside. He glared at the lieutenant who was crawling back to his feet.

“It’s an even fight now,” he snarled. “There’s no gun in my back this time. And when I beat the rest of your brains out, I put a bullet through the cripple’s head and take the girl with me just as I planned. You haven’t won, my stupid friend, you have only delayed the inevitable.”

The American glanced dazedly at Ann’s huddled, limp figure on the ground, sprawled where the German’s powerful shove had thrown her, and gradually the fog faded from his eyes and they hardened to points of cold anger.

“Okay, krauthead,” he murmured, “that was only the first round.”

“Attaboy!” yelled Red.

The German smiled tightly and moved in, but this time the American circled him, jabbing a fast, blinding left into the face. The German shook his head angrily and threw a half dozen wild punches into the air, but still the left was in his face, stinging, blinding, tipping him off balance before he could set himself to punch.

A flush of rage crept into his cheeks and he lunged forward swinging wildly with his right. The lieutenant let it whistle harmlessly over his head, and then he stepped in and slammed three hard punches into the German’s body.

The German gasped and dropped his hand to cover his stomach. And Tom Diggles set himself and slugged him with a right on his unprotected jaw.

The German’s eyes glazed and he staggered back, trying to lift his arms to protect his face. The lieutenant drove in, both fists flying, and the German fell back another step. A hard right toppled him off balance and his knees began to buckle slowly. As he fell Tom swung his right arm in a vicious chopping stroke that smacked against the side of the captain’s jaw with a sound like a brick falling on a pavement.

The German hit the ground, rolled once and was still.

For an instant the American, swaying slightly on his feet, stared at the limp figure of the captain, then he shook his head and moved to the girl’s side.

She was sitting on the ground, smiling.

“Are you okay, honey?” he asked anxiously.

“What I just saw,” she said, “would cure me of anything. You were wonderful.”

The lieutenant grinned slowly.

“It was kind of fun, too,” he said.

Chapter VIII

The motors of the plane were throbbing powerfully and the young American was at the controls making a last-minute check of his instruments.

Ann was at his side, watching him anxiously.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Our only problem is gas,” he answered. He glanced back at the two Germans, one bound carefully with leather belts and the other stretched out unconscious, and then his eyes moved to Red, who was propped up in the center of the cabin.

He glanced back at his gas gauge and shook his head.

“We’ve got quite a load,” he said, “All we can do is a lot of hoping.”

Tink and Jing were sitting at the edge of the doorway, taking a last look at the green depths of the jungle.

“Isn’t it wonderful how nicely everything turned out,” Jing said, sighing happily. “I just can’t believe all our troubles are actually over.”

“I can’t either,” Tink said nervously, glancing over his shoulder.

“You mean you’re worried about Nastee?”

Tink nodded. “I wonder where he is,” he said.

“Who wants to know?” a familiar and impudent voice said behind him.

Tink swung around and saw Nastee standing behind him, a contented smirk on his face. His hands were in his pockets and he was rocking impudently back and forth on his heels.

“Oh, oh,” Tink said.

And then he saw that Nastee was not alone. At his side was a wizened, sullen looking little imp with bulging eyes and a small bitter mouth.

Jing was tugging at Tink’s arm.

“Who’s that?” she whispered.

“A gremlin,” Tink said grimly.

“You bet he’s a gremlin,” Nastee said, chuckling happily. “He got here just a while ago and he showed me a lot of clever little tricks.”

“Do you mean that you two have sabotaged this plane again?” Tink said angrily.

Nastee laughed gleefully. “Just wait’ll we get in the air and you’ll see.”

“Now, just a minute you two,” Tink said, getting to his feet and staring from one to the other with determined eyes. “I’ve stood all I intend to of your interference and orneryness. And I’m sick and tired of your stupidity.”

“Stupidity?” the gremlin queried, his eyes sharp and bright. “How do you figure that?”

“I’ll tell you,” Tink said disgustedly. “We exist because people believe in us. If everyone stopped believing in us we’d stop existing. Even a gremlin should be able to figure that out. And yet you’re working for the Germans. And do you think they’ll believe in us. They don’t believe in love or honor or decency, so what makes you think they’ll believe in fairies.”

The gremlin scratched his head. “You got a good point there,” he said, at last.

“Now, you’re going to tell the rest of the gremlins what I’ve told you,” Tink said, “and if they don’t think it makes sense, tell them I’m going to be on their necks until they do.”

He swung the gremlin around in the front of the door and kicked him out of the plane.

“Don’t forget,” he shouted after the gremlin, “you’ve had your last warning.”

The gremlin sat on the grass and looked up at Tink with respect in his eyes.

“Okay, chum,” he said, “I’ll talk to ’em.”

Ann walked to the door and closed “All set, Tom,” she said.

“Okay.” He released the brake and the plane slowly gathered speed as it rolled slowly down the make-shift runway. With a slight tremble it left the ground, lagged for an instant and then began a slow, steady climb that took it over the tops of the surrounding trees with several feet to spare.

“Now,” the lieutenant said, relaxing in the pilot’s seat, “we have nothing to worry about as long as the gas holds out.”

Tink turned to Nastee.

“What did you do to this plane?” Nastee laughed. “You can shove gremlins around, but I’m different.”

“Then you aren’t going to tell me?”

“Why should I?” Nastee said scornfully, “if you’re so smart, why don’t you find out for yourself.”

Tink started for him but Jing grabbed his arm and Nastee took advantage of the opportunity to scurry away.

“Why did you do that?” Tink demanded.

“I’ve got a little idea,” Jing said with a smile. “I’m going after Nastee now and you follow me in a little while.”

“All right,” Tink grumbled, “but you should of let me beat it out of him.”

“Just like a man,” said Jing with calm superiority. “Only one approach to every problem, brute force.”

“Hurry up,” Tink said. “Don’t stand here making wise-cracks.”

Jing hurried away, and after a few minutes search she found Nastee up in the nose of the plane, sulking.

“Nastee,” she said, “I think you’re just terrible.”

Nastee grinned at her. “You aren’t fooling me. Tink sent you to get me to tell you what I did to the plane.”

“Oh no he didn’t,” Jing said. “I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was talking about the terrible way you fool everybody.”

“Fool everybody?” Nastee said blankly. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” Jing said firmly. “You’re so anxious to impress everyone with how bad you are, that you even lie about it. You know you do. And actually you’re just quiet and nice and afraid to do anything wrong. But it’s lying about it and making people think you’re bad when you’re really not, that’s terrible.”

“But I am really bad,” Nastee protested. ‘I don’t lie about that.”

“Oh yes you do,” Jing said. “You lied when you said you’d done something to the plane. And I know you didn’t.”

“How do you know?” Nastee challenged.

“Because I just heard the pilot talking,” Jing said, “and he said everything is working perfectly.”

Nastee grinned slyly. “He doesn’t know yet, that’s all. Just wait a while.”

“Now you’re just lying again,” Jing said.

Nastee looked at her in quick irritation.

“Oh, is that so,” he snapped. “Well, just you look here.”

He bent down and pulled aside a metal disc under which ran one of the main gas lines. There was a slow, steady leak from the pipe. Gas had collected at the base of the small steel chamber in a three inch puddle and it was rising steadily.

“You see,” Nastee chuckled, “We punctured the gas line.”

Jing looked helplessly at the steady trickle of gas that was dripping from the pipe into the small chamber. Nastee was on his knees peering gleefully at the slowly rising pool of gas and, suddenly, Jing stood up, and from sheer helpless irritation raised her foot and kicked Nastee squarely in the rear.

He squawked loudly and fell forward into the small, gas-filled chamber. She saw his legs threshing about wildly, and then he got himself straightened out and stood up sputtering indignantly-

“What’s the big idea?” he squeaked wrath fully.

The gas was at his neck and rising steadily. He looked at her and suddenly the belligerence left his face. He swallowed nervously.

“What are you going to do? he asked weakly.

“I don’t know,” Jing said.

Tink suddenly appeared at her side. He patted her back again solemnly. He peered down at Nastee and chuckled as the drenched little leprechaun shook an angry fist at him.

“Get me out of here,” Nastee shrieked. “This gas will be over my head soon.”

“Not if you’re smart,” Tink said.

“What do you mean?” Nastee cried.

“Well,” Tink said, “you can reach the leak, can’t you?”

Nastee stood on tip-toes and reached up until his hand closed over the small puncture in the gas pipe.

“Why, yes,” he said, “I can.”

The gas had reached his chin, but it stopped rising as the trickle from the pipe stopped.

“Well you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Tink grinned. “As long as you hold the leak, you won’t drown.

“But I’m soaking wet,” Nastee cried. He stared at Tink and Jing grinning down at him over the edge of the chamber, and his little face suddenly flushed with anger.

“It was all a trick,” he shouted. “You did this just to save the gas. Well I won’t do it. I’ll drown first.”

“I don’t think so,” Tink grinned.

He waved cheerfully at Nastee and then closed the cover of the metal chamber.

He put his arm around Jing’s waist and smiled at her.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.

And in the cabin of the plane the young lieutenant duplicated the gesture but he added a little something to it that the leprechauns haven’t gotten around to imitating yet.

He kissed her soundly.

Death Makes a Mistake

First published in Amazing Stories, January 1943.

Mr. Demise had Reggie Van Fiddler’s name in his book, but Reggie didn’t want to be on any list, so he set out to correct the mistake!

When Reggie Van Fiddler sauntered into the cool somber depths of the Midland Club’s lobby, he was feeling in an exceptionally amiable mood. There was a song in his heart and a bland, dreamily vague smile on his long, narrow face.

This state of blissful tranquility could be attributed to the fact that Reggie’s tan and white shoes were taking him directly toward the Club Bar, where he planned to while away the day sipping various long, cool drinks. And Reggie was always happy when the immediate future held the prospects of a drink.

He nodded brightly to a uniformed attendant.

“Glorious morning, isn’t he?” he said.

“It was a glorious morning,” the attendant corrected politely.

Reggie looked blankly at a clock on the wall and a puzzled frown spread over his equine features.

“Well, well,” he muttered, shaking his head, “how’d that happen?” He sauntered on toward the bar, nibbling at a hang nail. The morning had slipped away from him somehow. Here it was two o’clock in the afternoon already. It was quite a blow.

He remembered then that he had slept until twelve thirty and he brightened considerably. That explained it. Whistling merrily he strode on into the dim cool bar, with its heavy brown fixtures and solid atmosphere of masculinity.

The bartender set up his usual drink and with knowledge born of long experience, immediately began the preparation of a second.

Reggie sipped his drink and relaxed.

For several moments he stood at the bar, lazily contented, his brain slowed to about one revolution per minute. Finally he happened to glance toward the end of the bar and he noticed a small, dark, narrow-eyed man watching him closely.

Reggie smiled uncertainly and returned to his drink. The dark man at the end of the bar was the only other customer and Reggie knew that he was not a member of the club, for he had never seen him before in his life.

Reggie finished his drink and when the bartender set another before him he glanced again toward the end of the bar. The little dark man was still there, regarding him, it seemed, with a steady fixed stare.

Reggie coughed nervously and gulped his drink. There was something in the dark little man’s beady-eyed gaze that disturbed him. He had another quick drink and peeked from the corner of his eye at the little dark man.

There was something sinister about the chap, he felt sure. Reggie was the owner of an extremely lurid imagination and now, warmed by the glow of alcohol, he began to envision all sorts of wild possibilities.

After his fourth drink he was certain that the man was an Axis agent. Just why an Axis agent would be staring at him he had no idea, but he still felt sure the man was a Nazi.

Reggie finished his drink and set the glass on the bar. Then he casually sauntered toward the door. A few paces from the room’s only exit, he paused and under the pretense of inspecting a faded sports print on the wall, sneaked a quick glance at the dark little man.

The dark little man was still staring at him with narrowed, shaded eyes.

Reggie yawned ostentatiously and inched closer to the door. He was going to make a break for it, but it would have to be fast and clever. His heart was pounding with more gusto than usual and there were bright spots of excitement in his pale cheeks. This new role of dodging the Gestapo appealed enormously to his comic strip sense of melodrama.

Headlines popped before his mind’s eye.

REGGIE VAN FIDDLER MAKES ESCAPE!

From what he was going to escape he wasn’t quite sure, but he felt that the details would be in the body of the news story. Headlines didn’t tell everything, did they?

Within a foot of the door he turned casually and took one last look at the little man who was staring so intently at him. Then, with a sudden slithering motion, he slipped through the door.

He collided heavily with a small figure.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

He turned and started away, but he had barely taken three strides when he jerked to a stop. An expression of dazed amazement stole over his face and his sleepy eyes opened wide.

Wheeling suddenly he stared back at the small figure he had collided with. The man was still standing in the corridor that led from the bar, regarding Reggie with a fixed, thoughtful expression.

And he was the same dark little man Reggie had left inside the bar room seconds before!

Reggie gulped audibly. His adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a mouse in a sock.

How had the dark little man gotten out of the bar ahead of him?

Reggie didn’t know and he had no inclination to wait and ask questions. With one last incredulous look over his shoulder he wheeled and loped across the lobby, down the marble steps, through the club’s revolving doors and into the street.

He walked swiftly, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

The experience had been an unnerving one. When he reached the end of the block he hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of another bar.

As the cab rolled across the Loop Reggie settled back and gnawed nervously at his finger nails. Thoughtful meditation and analysis were not his strongest suits; in fact any thinking at all was an annoying chore to him, but he felt now that he had better bend his brain to the problem of the dark little man whom he’d seen at the club.

The chap was obviously interested in him, but why? There was no reasonable answer to that question, and there was no explanation to the way the little fellow had popped up outside the bar, when Reggie had seen him, a split-second before, inside the bar.

Reggie was still stewing over these matters when the cab came to a stop before a swanky glitter joint which catered to afternoon revellers and jitterbugs of both sexes.

Inside the smoky, dimly lighted den of din and discord Reggie forgot his troubles long enough to order a drink, his fifth of the afternoon. He was conscious of a vague buzzing between his ears and there was a pleasant mellow glow in the region of his solar plexus.

Had it not been for his disturbing experience at the Midland club, he would have been feeling very, very fine.

When his drink arrived he sipped it appreciatively and glanced about the crowded bar, looking for a familiar face. In one corner of the room he saw a tall young man in tweeds lounging against the wall with a drink in his hand. With a glad cry Reggie scrambled from his bar stool and lurched across the crowded floor, weaving his way with drunken dexterity through the jitterbugging maniacs.

“Hi!” he cried, when he reached the tweed-clad young man’s side. “How’ve you been, Ricky? Have a drink?”

“Been fine,” the young man answered. “Got a drink. Name isn’t Ricky.”

“Not Ricky?” Reggie shook his head frowning. “Could’ve sworn you were good old Ricky Davis, chap I knew at school. Well, how’re things?”

“Good,” the young man answered. “Have a drink?”

“Got one,” Reggie said. “Got to go now. It’s been nice seeing you again, Ricky.”

He started to weave his way back to the bar. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes focusing in fascination on the figure of a man at the bar. A man who had appropriated the seat which Reggie had vacated.

The man was small and dark. His eyes were narrow and inscrutable. He was the same person Reggie had seen at the club.

The breath left Reggie’s lungs in a rush.

Obviously the man had followed him here!

As he stood, transfixed, in the middle of the floor, the man turned and looked straight at him, a peculiar thoughtful expression on his dark face. After studying Reggie for a long interval he turned slowly back to the bar.

Reggie swallowed what was left of his drink in one gulp, but the liquor had no effect on him. After the shock he’d received it would take liquid dynamite to bolster him up.

He reeled back to the tall young man who was leaning against the wall.

“Ricky!” he cried hoarsely. “I’m being followed. Axis agents are after me.”

“Name isn’t Ricky,” the tall young man said. “Why?”

“Why what?” Reggie said blankly. He seemed to have fumbled the conversational ball. He wished the young man would speak with more clarity and add a few articles and pronouns to his sentences.

“Why are they following you?” the young man said peevishly. “Nothing better to do?”

“That’s just it,” Reggie said. “I don’t know why I’m being followed. But everywhere I go this little man sticks to me like a postage stamp.”

“Where is he now?”

Reggie pointed dramatically at the dark little man.

“At the bar. He took the stool I left. He’s right between that fat old man and that young girl with the red hair.”

The tweed-clad young man stared in the direction of Reggie’s pointing finger, then he frowned and glanced down at Reggie.

“Any pink elephants, yet?”

“I’m not drunk,” Reggie said indignantly. “That man has been following me like a conga partner all afternoon.”

The tall young man patted Reggie patiently on the shoulder.

“Sleep and rest will make a new man of you,” he said. “Go home. Go to bed. You’ve got hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations!” Reggie cried over the din of the orchestra. “What do you mean? Don’t you see the man I mean? Right between the fat old man and the girl with the red hair?”

The tweedish young man shook his head.

“The stool between the fat old man and the red-haired girl is completely unoccupied,” he said in the patient voice of a man instructing a very young child.

Reggie shook his head bewilderedly. There was a sudden cold hollow in the pit of his stomach. He opened and closed his mouth several times without producing a sound.

“Are you serious?” he finally managed to gasp.

“Certainly,” the young man answered. “There’s no one on the bar stool you left. You’re just seeing things. Take my advice and go home. You’ve had too much giggle water.”

Reggie set his drink down hastily. For a long deliberate moment he studied the back of the dark little man at the bar. Then he shook his head dazedly. Maybe this was all some wild product of his imagination. Maybe he was having hallucinations...

He shook his head again and then he shook hands with the young man in the tweed suit.

“I’m going home, Ricky,” he said firmly. “Say hello to all the gang for me.”

“Name isn’t Ricky,” the young man said, sipping from his drink, “but I’ll tell the boys you were asking.”

“Good,” Reggie said.

He left the crowded bar by a back entrance. The warm sunshine was pleasant and reassuring. People hurried past him, traffic surged in the streets, and everything was quite normal. He breathed a deep sigh and hailed a cab. He gave the driver the address of his apartment and then settled back against the soft leather cushions.

Sleep was all he needed. That was all.

When he reached his apartment on the near North Side he had succeeded in convincing himself that his peculiar experiences of the afternoon were only products of his fevered imagination.

As he let himself into his apartment he had firmly resolved to strictly ration his reading of comic strips and spy magazines. They were pretty strong meat if they weren’t handled with discretion.

The pleasantly furnished living room of his apartment was shrouded in late-afternoon semi-darkness and, when he closed and locked the door behind him, he switched on the lights.

The first thing he saw when he walked into the room was the little dark man whom he’d seen at the Club and at the bar a few minutes previously.

The dark little man was sitting in a straight chair, his hands resting on his knees. There was a faint smile on his face as he studied Reggie with calm, inscrutable eyes.

Reggie staggered back a few steps, clapping one hand hysterically to his forehead. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He had left this man at a bar in the Loop, but here he was now, sitting calmly and unconcernedly in the living room of his apartment.

“How did you get in here?” he gasped.

The dark little man stood up and smiled.

“Is that important?” he asked softly. “I am here and that is all that matters.”

Reggie swallowed loudly. There was something disturbing about the calm ambiguity of the man’s statement. He rubbed his damp palms together nervously.

“Can I get you a drink?” he blurted.

The dark little man shook his head slowly.

Reggie looked at him uneasily, noticing him in detail for the first time. He was small, hardly more than five feet two and he was slenderly built. His hair was jet black and it combed straight back from a high, delicate forehead. He wore severely tailored black clothes that fitted his small frame without a wrinkle. But his eyes dominated his entire personality, for they were a cold chilling black, lusterless and unwinking, as unrevealing as twin diamonds.

Reggie shivered slightly and looked wistfully toward the door of the apartment. He coughed nervously.

“Sorry to seem rude,” he said, laughing weakly, “but I’ve got to be toddling off now. It’s been nice — er — running into you. There are magazines on the table, liquor in the ice box, so just make yourself at home.”

He backed cautiously toward the door, smiling nervously.

“Don’t wait up for me,” he said. “I’ve—”

“Wait,” the dark little man said quietly, “I must talk with you.”

“Some other time,” Reggie said, feeling behind him for the door knob. “Awfully rushed just now. Sorry but—”

“Wait!” the little man said again, but this time his voice cracked like a whip. “Didn’t you hear me? I must talk with you?”

Reggie jumped at the cracking tone of the man’s voice. His hand jerked away from the door knob as if it were red hot.

“Oh, you want to talk to me?” he said foolishly. “I didn’t understand you.”

“My name,” the little man said, “is,” he paused and smiled cryptically, “Demise.”

“Glad to know you,” Reggie said. “My name is—”

“I know your name,” Mr. Demise said. “I know everything about you, Reginald Van Fiddler. I know things about you that you don’t know yourself.”

“Do you now?” Reggie said, becoming interested in spite of himself. “For instance?”

“I know that you are about to take a long trip,” Mr. Demise said.

“That’s not news,” Reggie said. “My draft board just classified me 1-A. I’ll be taking a long trip very shortly.”

“That is not the trip I am referring to,” Mr. Demise said. “You are going on a trip with me.”

Reggie blinked. He couldn’t think of anyone with whom he would rather not take a trip than this dark, sinister little man who called himself Mr. Demise. What did Demise mean, anyway?

“It’s nice of you, and all that,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. My draft board might not like it.”

“They will understand,” Mr. Demise said.

“I don’t know about that,” Reggie said. He was beginning really to worry. There was something damnably inevitable about Mr. Demise’s calm statements. “They’re pretty ticklish about such things. I think we’d just better forget the whole idea.”

“That is impossible,” Mr. Demise said.

Reggie rubbed his moist palms on his trouser legs.

“Who are you?” he asked hesitantly. “Have you been following me around all day just to sell me on the idea of a trip? Are you from Cook’s tours?”

Mr. Demise smiled and shook his head.

“I am not interested in selling you the idea of a trip. I am simply telling you that you are going on a trip. I have already made all the arrangements. There is nothing that can possibly change them.”

“Where am I going?” Reggie asked. His voice was a whisper.

“With me,” Mr. Demise said.

“That’s no answer,” Reggie said, clutching at straws. “Who are you? Where are you going?”

Mr. Demise smiled again, very faintly. He walked slowly to the mantelpiece and plucked a rose from a vase. His hand closed gently over the flower as he turned to face Reggie.

“Perhaps this will answer your questions,” he said softly.

He opened his hand and dropped the flower to the floor at Reggie’s feet. Reggie’s eyes widened in sheer amazement.

Reggie looked at the seared rose, and then he knew!

For the soft glowing beauty of the flower was faded forever. It lay on the floor, a blackened, dead reminder of its former glory.

“It’s dead,” he said incredulously. “It withered at the touch of your hand.”

Mr. Demise nodded slowly and there was a wistful sadness in his face.

“All living things die at my touch,” he said. “For I am Death!”

“Death!” Reggie echoed. For an instant he stared blankly at Mr. Demise. “Death!” he repeated. “Why that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” He actually felt a sensation of relief in the realization that he’d been entertaining some loony instead of an Axis agent as he’d feared. “You’re off your trolley,” he said to Mr. Demise. “You’d better get moving before your keeper finds you. Death! What a gag!”

“I assure you it is not a gag,” Mr. Demise said slowly. “Your time is near at hand and I have been sent to take you to the land of Darkness.”

“Think again, chum,” Reggie said emphatically. “I’m not going to Harlem with you or anyone else and that’s final.”

“It is useless to protest,” Mr. Demise said. “Your destiny is sealed. You must come with me.”

“You are plain balmy,” Reggie said. “I’ve never heard a sillier yarn in my life. So you’re Death, are you?”

Mr. Demise nodded. “I am one of his agents.”

“Changing your story a little, aren’t you?” Reggie said triumphantly. “Well, since when has Death been announced by personal messengers? A man steps in front of a car. He’s killed. That’s all there is to it. There aren’t little black men standing on the curb pushing him into the street, are there? And they don’t come around a couple of hours in advance tipping him off, do they? No!”

“When a mortal passes over,” Mr. Demise said, “there is always an agent of Death present superintending the details. But he is not always visible to his charge.”

Reggie poured himself a drink and lit a cigarette.

“Well, thanks just the same,” he said, “but I don’t want any special effects when I pass over. If there’s a messenger of Death around I don’t want to see him. Just let him stay invisible. That’s the way I want it.”

Mr. Demise looked slightly pained. There was an embarrassed look on his normally expressionless features.

“Usually the agent of Death is invisible,” he said. “In fact his orders are to remain invisible under all circumstances.”

“Okay then,” Reggie said. “You’re breaking orders. Be a nice obedient chum now and fade away.”

Mr. Demise shrugged and stepped backward — and suddenly he was gone! He had disappeared into thin air, soundlessly, instantaneously.

“Why what?” Reggie said blandly. He started to sip his drink when suddenly the full realization of what had happened burst on him. The drink fell from his nerveless fingers with a crash.

He stared frantically about the room.

Mr. Demise was gone! It was incredible! It was unbelievable! But it was a fact!

He poured himself another drink and drained it in one breathless gulp. He felt his reason tottering as his gaze swung desperately about the room.

“Mr. Demise!” he cried. “Come back! Where are you!”

“I am here before you,” Mr. Demise’s voice sounded in the air. “Are you convinced now?”

Reggie mopped his forehead weakly.

“Yes,” he gasped. “I’m convinced.”

Mr. Demise reappeared as suddenly as he had vanished. He smiled faintly at Reggie. He was apparently completely unruffled by his transformation.

Reggie poured himself another drink with trembling fingers.

“D-don’t do that any more,” he pleaded.

“As you wish,” Mr. Demise said agreeably. “I am sorry if I shocked you. I can see now that it was a mistake to let you see me in the first place. I understand now why it is strictly forbidden.”

Reggie drained his drink.

“I wish you hadn’t decided to break regulations,” he said moodily. “I’ve never been so upset in all my life. Why didn’t you remain invisible, if you’re supposed to? You aren’t going to creep into people’s hearts if you pop up and announce yourself as an agent of Death and start making speeches about whisking them off to the Land of Darkness. People just don’t like that sort of thing. By all means stay invisible in the future.”

Mr. Demise shuffled awkwardly and for the first time his poise seemed deserting him.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said gloomily. “But I was curious.”

“That’s a fine excuse,” Reggie said scathingly. “I should think they’d get a man of tact and diplomacy for your job. Not some nosy person whose curiosity runs away with him.”

“You see,” Mr. Demise explained miserably, “you happened to be my first assignment. I’ve had no experience at all in this work and I was curious to see what kind of person I was going to take back with me. And I wanted to get a first-hand reaction from you.”

Reggie mixed himself another drink. He was beginning to feel belligerent.

“So?” he cried. “They sent an amateur down to get me, did they? I suppose I don’t rate an experienced escort. So they sent you. I’m surprised they didn’t just tell the office boy to do the job.”

“Your levity is poor taste,” Mr. Demise observed frigidly. “I can assure you that I am perfectly qualified to act as your guide to the Other World. I have studied hard to perfect myself for my work and I was considered one of the outstanding pupils in the class which just graduated. You do not have to relieve your spite by making slighting references to my professional ability.”

“Bah!” Reggie said. “If you have any professional ability it hasn’t been noticeable so far. You’re just out of some college, aren’t you? You talk like a college boy. You don’t make sense.”

Mr. Demise looked hurt.

“I’m sorry you’re taking this attitude,” he said. “I had hoped we could be friends.”

“Friends!” Reggie shrieked. “Am I expected to be friendly with some ghoul who comes prowling around threatening to whisk me off to Eternity? What more do they expect of me? To pay my own way too, I suppose.”

“Your passage will be taken care of at the other end,” Mr. Demise said. “Since you have taken such an ungracious stand we will not dally further.”

“Now wait a minute,” Reggie said. He felt his throat getting dry. The prospects of Death were not pleasant. He didn’t want to die right now. He had things to do. There was that badminton match next week with Snuffy Smith...

“Can’t we put this thing off a while?” he asked hopefully. “There’s no sense in rushing things, I always say. Why don’t you go off and get yourself a lot of experience and then come back for me?”

“That is impossible,” Mr. Demise said flatly. He drew from his inside coat pocket a slim black book which he opened to the first page. “You are first on my list and I must carry out my orders to the letter. All the information as to person, place and method is contained in this book and it would be impossible to change it.”

“Place and method, eh?” Reggie said weakly. He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “You mean you’ve got the dope there on how it’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen?”

“Certainly,” Mr. Demise replied. “We don’t use a hit-or-miss method. Everything is worked out to a science. You, for instance, are—” Mr. Demise paused and shook his head. “No,” he continued, “I can’t tell you. That is also against instructions.”

“You haven’t paid much attention to instructions so far,” Reggie said sulkily. “Can’t you give me a hint as to how I’m going to get it?”

Mr. Demise shook his head firmly.

“That would be an unthinkable breach of conduct,” he said, shaking his head severely and frowning. “Absolutely unthinkable.”

“All right,” Reggie said resignedly. There was no point, he realized, in arguing with this inhuman icicle. “But let’s have a drink before we get down to — er — business.”

“I am not allowed to drink while on duty,” Mr. Demise said primly.

“For gosh sakes,” Reggie said disgustedly, “you weren’t thinking about your precious orders and regulations when you followed me around, scaring the hell out of me. Oh no! That was all right. But when I ask you to do a little something outside the letter of your instructions it’s no soap. If there’s anything fair in that I can’t see it.”

Mr. Demise shuffled uncomfortably.

“It was indiscreet of me to allow you to see me,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps your objection is justifiable. It might square things a bit if I would take a drink with you. Not that I would expect to enjoy the stuff but it seems the fair thing to do.”

“Fine,” Reggie said.

He mixed two drinks in somber silence. Because he realized that it was probably the last time he would ever perform that pleasant chore, he put his heart and soul into the task and when he finally handed Mr. Demise his drink it was a veritable masterpiece.

Mr. Demise drank the drink — it was a double Martini with a splash of Quantro — in one long appreciative gulp. He set the glass down and sighed contentedly.

“Another?” Reggie suggested hopefully.

“No,” Mr. Demise said, “one is plenty. As a matter of fact,” he said, “that’s the first drink I ever had. Alcohol is one of our finest helpers but we aren’t supposed to touch it. Personally I think its intoxicating effect is greatly overrated.”

Reggie leaned forward and there was a peculiar gleam in his eyes.

“So that was your first drink, eh?” he asked. “And you don’t feel anything?”

“Not a thing,” said Mr. Demise. “Of course I notice a certain glow, but that’s all.”

“Just a certain glow, eh?” Reggie said.

“Thash all,” Mr. Demise said. He sat down suddenly. “And my tongue ish a lil’ thick.”

“Well, that’s only natural,” Reggie said. He mixed another drink and there was a cryptic smile on his lips. “Alcohol is a peculiar thing. One drink will addle a person’s wits and the second will act as an antidote. Strange, isn’t it?”

Mr. Demise rocked slightly in the chair. His coal-black eyes were a bit glazed. “Ish very strange,” he conceded.

“Possibly you’d like to try the antidote?” Reggie said casually.

“Might not be a bad idea,” said Mr. Demise.

Reggie handed him the second drink and watched contentedly as Mr. Demise drank it down. Mr. Demise set down the glass.

“You wush right,” he said, slumping against the back of the chair. “Absolutely right. Second drink ish an antidote. Jush what I needed.”

“Absolutely,” Reggie agreed solemnly.

Mr. Demise closed his eyes but he opened them almost immediately. He struggled up to a sitting position.

“I hash something to do,” he muttered. His hand groped into the inside of his coat, returned with the slim black book. “Very important,” he mumbled. “First assignment. Can’t have any slip ups.”

Reggie moistened his lips nervously. He eyed the little black book carefully. That might be the way...

“How about another drink, old boy,” he said heartily. He mixed one quickly, handed it to Mr. Demise. Mr. Demise took it in his left hand and Reggie deftly plucked the black book from his right hand. Mr. Demise appeared not to notice the exchange. He drank the drink methodically.

Reggie tossed the book under a coffee table.

Mr. Demise climbed unsteadily to his feet.

Reggie took him by the arm. “What say we go out and have a few quick antidotes?” he suggested.

Mr. Demise nodded stupidly. He mumbled something unintelligible and allowed Reggie to lead him to the door. Reggie’s brain was working at full speed. If he could just ditch Mr. Demise and get back to the book everything might be saved. His idea was sheer brilliance...

Their first destination was a bar. Reggie found a cab, shoved Mr. Demise inside and ordered the driver to one of the dozens of friendly bars with which he was familiar.

At the first stop Mr. Demise had two more drinks. When he had drained the second Reggie hauled him to his feet and started for another palate palace. His object was to keep Mr. Demise so bewildered and drunk that he would forget his job.

For a while he succeeded. Mr. Demise followed him helplessly from bar to bar and sat tottering on high stools happily pouring fiery intoxicants into his already overburdened stomach.

But finally he reached the state of saturation where the liquor produced a steadily diminishing effect. Reggie watched him worriedly and ordered more and more drinks.

But it was no use.

In spite of the enormous quantities of liquor he had consumed, Mr. Demise was slowly sobering up. His face was losing its blank expression and an intelligent gleam was creeping back into his eyes.

He began to fumble uncertainly through his pockets, a worried expression settling over his features.

Reggie slapped him on the back resoundingly.

“Have a drink!” he shouted into his ear.

Mr. Demise shook his head stubbornly.

“Got a job to do,” he muttered. He went slowly through his pockets and an expression of horror replaced the worried look on his face.

“Where’s my book?” he gasped. “I’ve lost my book! This is terrible. I’ve got to find it!”

“What book?” Reggie asked innocently.

“The book with all the names and places and dates and methods,” Mr. Demise moaned. “I’ve lost it.”

Reggie shrugged philosophically.

“Too bad,” he said. “But things are never as black as they seem. Maybe it’ll turn up somewhere. The thing to do is just sit tight until someone finds it and reports it.”

“I can’t wait,” wailed Mr. Demise. “These things have to happen on schedule. There’d be an awful rumpus in the complaint department if I started sending people up there haphazardly. And I don’t even remember whom I’ve got on the list. You’re the only one I’m sure of.”

Reggie choked on his drink.

“Yes,” Mr. Demise went on obliviously, “you’re the first. I’m sure of that much. And I’d better send you along right away. I’ll do that much correctly, at least.”

“Now, just a minute,” Reggie said, “how’re you sure you’ve got me right? I looked at that book and I don’t think I’m the man you want at all.”

“You looked at the book!” cried Mr. Demise with sudden suspicion. “So that’s where it went. That’s why you got me drunk. You stole my book, hoping to evade your destiny, didn’t you?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Reggie said, forcing a note of outraged indignation into his voice.

“Yes you did,” Mr. Demise said. “I’m not going to wait a second longer in your case. Mr. Fiddler, prepare yourself for a long trip and don’t plan on coming back.”

Reggie realized that the jig was up. Mr. Demise had a grim business-like note in his voice and there was no hope of prolonging things further. Drastic action was needed, not discussion.

With a leap like a startled gazelle Reggie left his stool and bounded for the door. Before Mr. Demise could turn around, he was in the street, shouting frantically for a cab.

A cab pulled to the curb and Reggie leaped into its dark interior. Over his shoulder he saw Mr. Demise stagger from the bar, a wrathful expression stamped on his dark features.

The cab started away with a roar. Reggie shouted his address at the driver and squirmed about to peek out the rear window.

He saw Mr. Demise clambering into another cab.

“Hurry!” he shouted to his driver.

“Life or death, eh?” the cabby said conversationally.

Reggie winced. “You said it.”

The cab caromed around corners, hit the Outer Drive and hurled along like a frightened cotton-tail until it reached the near North side, where it swung west and sped through the labyrinthine streets that led to Reggie’s apartment.

From the rear window Reggie could see Mr. Demise’s cab speeding after them, steadily closing the gap. His palms were moist and the effects of the liquor had completely faded, leaving him horribly sober. There was nothing funny about this predicament.

His cab jolted to a stop and Reggie threw a bill at the driver and leaped out and raced into the foyer of his building.

By a miraculous stroke of luck the elevator was not in use. He slammed the door and jabbed the button and the car started upward with a jerk. He breathed a long shuddering sigh of relief. Maybe there would yet be time...

The elevator stopped at his floor. Just as he opened the door and stepped out, the elevator suddenly dropped back down the shaft. One of his legs dangled down the shaft. With a startled squawk he pulled himself onto the floor landing.

Mr. Demise obviously meant business. If he’d been in that elevator everything would be all over now. As it was he still had a chance.

He let himself into his apartment, switched on the light and dove underneath the coffee table. The black book of doom was still there. Frantically Reggie opened it to the first page, found his own name.

He jerked a pencil from his pocket...

He was still scribbling furiously when the door of the apartment banged open and Mr. Demise strode into the room, his face black as a thundercloud.

Reggie dropped the pencil and hid the book from view with his body.

“So!” Mr. Demise cried. “You would try to escape?”

He raised both hands commandingly in the air.

Before he could move again Reggie wheeled about.

“Just a minute,” he shrieked. He held out the slim black book to Mr. Demise. “I was sure a mistake had been made. Here! Look for yourself.”

“I want no more of your tricks,” Mr. Demise warned ominously.

“This is no trick,” Reggie said. “You should be grateful to me for catching the error in time.”

Mr. Demise took the book from Reggie and examined it carefully. The frown gradually faded from his face as his eyes lingered on the page. He shuffled his feet awkwardly and cleared his throat.

“It seems,” he said in a small, chastened voice, “that a mistake has been made.”

Reggie’s heart pounded with hope.

“It certainly has,” he said. “This entire affair should be reported to someone. That’s what happens when you put inexperienced men on the job. You wind up with a bungled mess.”

“I don’t know how it happened,” Mr. Demise said miserably. “All I can say is I’m sorry.”

“Fine thing,” Reggie said stuffily. “Mess up your job like this and then say you’re sorry. I’d advise, Demise, that you lay off the liquor when you’re supposed to be working.”

“I will in the future,” Mr. Demise said humbly.

“See that you do,” Reggie said sternly. “Now I’d say you’d better get to work on that first assignment.”

“Yes, I will,” Mr. Demise said. With drooping shoulders he moved slowly to the door. With his hand on the knob he turned again to Reggie.

“I hate to be a pest,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t know how to go about this job. Maybe you could help me. Where can I find this fellow?”

Reggie chuckled and began to mix himself a drink.

“I’d advise you to try Berchtesgaden,” he said. “Just ask anyone you meet. They’ll tell you where you can find Adolf Hitler.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Demise said gratefully. “I won’t slip up on this one.”

“See that you don’t,” Reggie said.

The Willful Puppets

First published in Fantastic Adventures, February 1943.

Chapter I

Larry Temple was feeling rather low when he stepped out into the alley that flanked the Palace theatre. He had just completed his act and the response of the audience could hardly have been termed enthusiastic.

Larry leaned against the brick wall of the theatre and moodily lighted a cigarette.

“To hell with ’em,” he muttered bitterly. “They just don’t appreciate any act that hasn’t got a strip-tease in it.” Larry Temple was a puppeteer and, as such, he was considered, in the judgment of those in show business, about one notch below a ventriloquist and about on a par with acrobats.

He was thoroughly sick of manipulating puppets for a living, but he had to eat and there was nothing else he could do to earn his cakes and coffee.

As he flipped his half-smoked cigarette away he noticed a small tavern across the street, advertising liquors and beer via a cheerily blinking neon sign.

Larry was not a drinking man, but his present dissatisfaction weighed against his normal abstinence. He crossed the street and entered the small, dimly lighted bar.

The bartender mopped the bar in front of him with a damp rag and looked inquiringly at him.

“Rye,” he said. “Make it double.”

He lit another cigarette and pushed his gray fedora back on his forehead. He was a clean-cut young man with pleasant brown eyes and a small mustache.

The bartender set the drink on the bar.

“Thanks,” Larry said. He tossed a bill on the bar and then picked up the glass of whisky. For a second he inspected the ruddy brown contents of the glass with misgivings; then he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it with one gulp.

The effect was like that of a small bomb exploding gently in his stomach. A warm languorous wave spread from his midriff and flowed down his legs and up to his arms and throat. He blinked and a hiccough shook him slightly.

The sensation was not at all unpleasant. He ordered another drink and loosened his collar. It suddenly seemed a bit too tight.

He glanced at the clock over the bar. It said 8:45. He made a mental note of the time, for his next show was at 9:30. But he had plenty of time.

The second drink was smoother than the first and it was then that Larry made a discovery, which drinkers the world over have been making since time immemorial. Namely, that each succeeding drink tastes better than its predecessor.

This discovery was like a revelation to Larry.

He ordered another drink to prove his thesis and he was nodding with thoughtful pleasure when he had finished the third drink. He was absolutely right. The third drink tasted immeasurably smoother and better than the second, which hadn’t been any slouch.

A little while later, he glanced at the clock. He blinked and peered at it intently. He experienced a faint sensation of annoyance. The damn clock wasn’t behaving. Its hands were revolving slowly and steadily and the numerals on the dial were moving about in small circles.

“No way for a clock to act,” he muttered. He put his elbows on the bar and slumped forward. He felt better that way, he discovered.

The bartender leaned toward him.

“What’d you say, buddy?”

“I asked for a drink,” Larry said, with considerable dignity. “And, If you aren’t busy, you might tell me what time it is.”

“Sure thing.”

The bartender glanced over his shoulder. “It’s 9:05.” He poured another drink for Larry.

“Thank you,” Larry said solemnly. He suddenly realized what a sterling chap this bartender was. He blinked owlishly.

“You are a scholar and a gentleman,” he said, punching the surface of the bar for emphasis.

“The same to you,” the bartender said. He watched Larry drain the glass of whisky with slightly apprehensive eyes. “You’d better take it a little easy,” he advised. “That stuff you’re drinking ain’t milk.”

Larry digested this information in silence. Somehow it seemed important that he wasn’t drinking milk, but he couldn’t quite figure out why.

He looked at the clock again but it was still acting foolishly.

The bartender said, “It’s 9:10. Have you got a date or something?”

Larry nodded, beaming. He liked this chap more each minute. He liked the way he figured things out and drove right to the heart of an issue.

“What time is your date?” the bartender asked.

Larry was reaching the secretive stage. He put a finger over his lips and peered up and down the deserted bar.

“Mustn’t tell,” he hissed in a thick conspiratorial whisper. “McGinty wouldn’t want me to tell.”

“Who’s McGinty?”

“McGinty is the stage manager,” Larry confided.

“Are you an actor?” the bartender asked.

Larry felt a warm, satisfied glow stealing over him and it was not altogether the effect of the liquor.

“Yes,” he said, “you might say I am an actor. That is, after a fashion.”

“Gee,” the bartender said, and the admiration in his voice was sufficiently pronounced to seep through the alcoholic fog that was enveloping Larry. “That’s sure interesting,” he went on wistfully. “You know I always had a hankering to go on the stage. Making love to pretty girls all day is my idea of nice work, if you can get it.”

Larry began to feel unhappy again.

“If you can get it,” he said. A tear fell into his empty glass.

“What’s the matter?” the bartender asked solicitously.

“I need another drink,” Larry said mournfully.

“Okay,” the bartender said, reaching for the bottle, “but are you sure you’ve got time? It’s 9:25 right now.”

Larry straightened with a jerk.

Nine-twenty-five!

His act was supposed to go on at 9:15!

This realization had a slightly sobering effect on him. Missing an act was one of the unpardonable crimes of show business. Performers who missed their acts inevitably wound up missing their meals. That was as definite as an algebraic equation.

He rose unsteadily to his feet.

“I must be going,” he announced, in about the tone of voice Napoleon must have used when his boat set out for St. Helena.

“I hope you’re not late,” the bartender said.

Larry glanced at the clock. He had sobered sufficiently to read the hands. It was 9:30!

“Hope is a wonderful thing,” he muttered. He patted the bartender on the shoulder. “We, who are about to go hungry, salute you.”

With that he staggered out of the bar and lurched across the alley to the stage door of the Palace. He felt fine, except for his realization that black doom was awaiting him; and also his knees had an odd tendency to work in reverse.

Fortunately there was no one on guard at the stage door and he was able to slip backstage without being noticed. He saw a small knot of people gathered at the wings watching whatever was happening on the stage and he heard the roars of applause from the theatre audience.

Someone was getting a hand, he thought bitterly.

In the crowd of stage hands and performers gathered at the wings he recognized the stocky belligerent figure of Matt McGinty.

He swallowed guiltily. He had no desire to meet McGinty now. After missing his act, McGinty would be in a mood to strangle him with his bare hands.

With commendable stealth, considering the load he was carrying, Larry tip-toed past the group at the wings without being noticed. He crept through the maze of backdrops and ropes until he reached a slit in the curtain, from where he could watch the act on the stage without being observed.

When he peeked through the narrow opening in the back curtain the sight that met his eyes gave him a distinct start. For in the center of the stage was his puppet booth and, at the angle he was looking, he could see his three puppets going through their paces.

The antics in which they were indulging was not in any way similar to the act he had perfected; but the audience was obviously delighted.

Larry felt as if he had been slugged at the base of the skull with a lead pipe. He had returned to the theatre expecting to have fire and brimstone heaped on his head by McGinty for missing his act. And here was the act going merrily on, apparently not minding his absence one bit.

But who was manipulating the puppets!

The curtain at the back of the booth was drawn and whoever was inside was not visible to Larry. But, whoever he was, Larry knew he was a master.

There was a life-like humor and deftness in the performance of the puppets that exceeded any effect Larry had ever been able to create.

The act was reaching its climax. Already, Larry knew, it had been on several minutes too long, but far from minding, the audience was eating it up.

When the curtain finally came down and the stage hands emerged from the wings and speedily shoved the puppet’s booth off the stage, the packed house was shaking to the applause of the audience.

Larry listened to the ovation enviously. He had never gotten a reception like that. He was lucky if the audience took pity on his efforts and applauded through kindness.

But he did not feel too bitter. For he realized that someone had saved him from a nasty mess. If whoever had stepped into the breach to operate the puppet act hadn’t been on hand, it would have been terrible. McGinty at this moment would be throwing him out the rear door of the theatre with explicit and profane instructions not to come back.

The stage hands had shoved the puppet booth in to the wings and Larry realized that the least he could do was to thank whoever had saved his neck.

With that thought in mind he emerged from his place of concealment. As he stepped into the view of the crowd in the wings McGinty saw him and strode toward him.

Larry felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

McGinty stopped in front of him, hands on his hips.

“It breaks my heart to tell you this,” he said, “but that was a darn good act.” He smiled suddenly and slapped Larry on the back. “What are you looking so scared about? I’m telling you, you laid ’em in the aisles. Listen! They’re still clapping. Keep up that kind of work, son, and you’ll be out of the bread-and-butter circuits darn soon.”

Larry sputtered helplessly. He tried to speak but there were no words to express the weird thoughts that were running crazily through his head.

“What’s the matter with you?” McGinty demanded. “You’d think there something wrong about knocking that audience cold like you did.”

Without answering, Larry moved dazedly to the puppet booth which was standing in the wings. He drew aside the rear curtain and peered into the small aperture from which the puppeteer manipulated the puppets.

It was empty!

He stepped around to the front of the booth and stared intently at the three puppets who were hanging inertly from the strings which motivated them.

The three figures were carved from wood and cleverly jointed together at knees, elbows and neck. Their small, merry faces were tinted with life-like shades and there were bright glints in their shining eyes, which were made of buttons.

Larry called them Pat and Mike and Tim.

In the act, Pat and Mike were hellions, in and out of trouble all the time, while Tim was dutiful and innocent.

But in spite of the fact that Larry sometimes thought of them as having personality and individuality, they were actually three wooden figures, about eight inches high, cleverly fashioned to react to his manipulations.

And that was all.

Larry took off his hat slowly and ran a hand through his hair. He felt the effects of the liquor deserting him and he didn’t like that. He felt that he was going to need something to sustain him.

For there was a great big question in his mind.

Who had manipulated these puppets?

That was the question and, needless to say, there was no answer to it.

McGinty was looking at him closely.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “You act as if you’d been on a binge.”

“McGinty,” Larry said slowly, “X didn’t handle this act. Do you know who did?”

“Huh?” McGinty’s voice was incredulous. He leaned forward and sniffed suspiciously. “As I thought. You’ve been swilling a lot of cheap booze from the smell of you. It’s lucky this is your last show tonight. Go home and sleep it off and don’t let me catch you drinking on the job again.”

“But I know what I’m talking about,” Larry said. He felt a peculiar flutter of panic. “I didn’t handle this show. I couldn’t have. I wasn’t here.”

“Who’re you trying to kid?” McGinty demanded. “You’re out of your head. Sleep it off, I’m telling you.” Larry shook his head weakly and stared at the puppets.

“Maybe they know,” he muttered. “I don’t.”

He turned on his heel and strode toward his dressing room, weaving only slightly from the load he was still carrying.

Chapter II

Larry did a lot of thinking when he got to his dressing room. With an ice pack on his dully aching head he sat at his dressing table staring moodily at his image as reflected in the long, cracked mirror.

And the more he thought about the weird events that had taken place, the more befuddled he became. Maybe he, himself, had manipulated the puppets. Possibly he had been so drunk that he just didn’t remember.

He shook his head irritably. That wouldn’t wash. He hadn’t been that drunk. And he had a distinct recollection of having watched the act from back-stage.

He couldn’t have been in the puppet booth manipulating the marionettes and, at the same time, back-stage watching the show, could he?

No, he told himself decisively, that would have been impossible. So there he was. Stuck.

Stuck, that, was, for any reasonable explanation of how the act had managed to go on while he was sitting in a bar a half block away.

He shook his head wearily. Nothing made any sense.

He had reached this conclusion when there was a sudden sharp knock on the door of his dressing room. The sound of the impatient knock was like a knife driven into each of his eardrums and then twisted slowly.

He jumped involuntarily and the ice pack fell from his head to the floor.

The knock was repeated, sharply, insistently.

Larry winced, and walked to the door.

“Go away!” he shouted. “I just died!”

The door opened and a girl stepped into the room. She surveyed him coolly.

“You look it,” she murmured.

Larry goggled at her speechlessly. She was just about the most breath-taking parcel of femininity he had ever inspected. Her eyes were deep and level and their shade would have shamed violets. The top of her smooth-shining blonde head came just about to his shoulders and she was as neatly put together as a Christmas package. She was wearing clothes. Larry was too impressed with the contents of this particular package to notice the details of the trimmings.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Won’t you please come in?”

This was a somewhat superfluous invitation, for the girl was already in the room and Larry noticed then, for the first time, that she was not alone.

A man was with her. A tall, well-groomed man with a lean, arrogant face and smooth, dark hair that fitted his skull as closely as a velvet cap.

This immaculately turned-out specimen looked about the dressing room with an amused twist to his lips. His attitude was that of slumming royalty.

“I told you this was a mistake,” he murmured to the girl.

The girl ignored the remark. She turned directly to Larry and he noticed that her small lovely jaw was squared stubbornly.

“I’m Gloria Manners,” she said, “and this is my friend, Dereck Miller.”

“How do you do,” Larry said.

The tall creature designated as Dereck Miller ignored the hand that Larry extended and nodded his head carelessly. Larry discovered that he had taken a violent dislike to Dereck Miller. And this was rather unusual, for Larry was the easy-going, cheerful type, who very seldom bothered to have serious emotions about people. Now he found himself thinking rather wistfully of the many interesting things that could happen to the man, what with big cars whizzing about and people dropping flower pots from high buildings...

This pleasant train of thought was derailed abruptly by the girl’s next remark.

“I want to hire your services, Mr. Temple, if it can be arranged.”

“What?”

“Yes,” the lovely girl said, “I saw your act a few minutes ago and I’d like to hire you to perform at a party I’m giving this coming weekend. Would you be interested?”

“Why — why, yes, indeed,” Larry said breathlessly. He wasn’t thinking of the job so much as the opportunity of seeing this girl again. “Just what sort of a party is it?”

“Quite respectable,” the girl said, smiling slightly.

“I didn’t mean—”

“That’s all right. The party will be given at my father’s estate in Pineknoll. You will come down Friday night and bring your equipment with you. The party is on Saturday night and you will have all day Saturday to set up your apparatus. One of the servants will meet you at the train Friday night, if that is agreeable with you.”

“Why, it sounds perfect,” Larry said enthusiastically.

The tall impeccably clad young man named Dereck regarded the girl with a faintly annoyed expression.

“My dear,” he murmured, “are you sure the colonel will approve of what you’re doing? After all, I don’t imagine that he relishes having just anyone invited out to Pineknoll.”

“Father won’t mind,” the girl said.

“That’s big of the old boy,” Larry said drily.

The girl put her hand on his arm in an impulsive, contrite gesture. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. You must think we’re terribly rude. It isn’t that, but Father is somewhat peculiar, but I’m sure you’ll get along with him.”

“I’ll try my best,” Larry grinned. The girl’s warm sincerity had completely charmed away his feeling of irritation. “He can’t be too bad. After all, he’s your father.”

Dereck coughed and flicked away a spot of dust from his coat sleeve.

“Shall we be going?” He let the question hang meaningly in the air.

The girl was regarding Larry uncertainly. Finally, as if making up her mind, she held out her hand and smiled.

“We’ll be expecting you,” she said. “Friday night.”

“Righto,” Larry said.

The girl smiled again and walked out through the door. Dereck lingered a moment in the doorway.

“Don’t presume on a professional relationship, old boy,” he said softly. Then, with a final glance of faint contempt about the littered dressing room, he departed.

Larry turned the remark over in his mind for several seconds and then he shrugged and bent to retrieve his ice pack. When he straightened up, there was a small man standing in the doorway, regarding him with a cheerful smile.

“Mind if I drop in, chum?” the little man asked.

Larry stared at this new arrival in mild surprise. He was wearing a checkered plaid suit, a green shirt and an orange tie. On his round head he wore a furry cap pulled low over one eye. He was about as inconspicuous as a pink elephant on the morning after.

“Come right in,” Larry said expansively. “This is becoming a popular place these days. We’ll need stop and go signs if the traffic holds up.” He sat down at the dressing room make-up table and balanced the ice pack on his head. “And what can I do for you, little friend?”

The little man stepped into the room and closed the door carefully. He was still smiling and his blue eyes were tiny pin-points of lights in his red-wrinkled face.

“Right nice of you, chum,” he said gratefully. “The name is Buggy Rafferty, late of Atlanta and Leavenworth.”

Larry blinked in surprise.

“Did you say Atlanta?”

“That’s right, chum. And Leavenworth; don’t forget Leavenworth.”

“I’ll try not to,” Larry said dubiously. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Rafferty?”

“Aw, call me Buggy,” the little man said, with a modest wave of his hand. “I ain’t a guy to stand on formality. Particularly with me partners.”

“That’s very democratic of you,” Larry said. “And—” He stopped speaking abruptly as the little man’s last remark hit him solidly. “What was that last, again?” he asked.

“Aw, there I go again,” Buggy laughed, “gettin’ ahead of myself. ’Cause you didn’t know we was going to be partners, did you, chum?”

“The idea hadn’t occurred to me,” Larry admitted. And now that you bring it up, I don’t find it intriguing. Do you care to elucidate, or do you find it fun being mysterious?”

The little man pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“I guess I’d better tell all,” he said. “That would be nice,” Larry said. “Shoot.”

“It’s like this,” Buggy said, “all my life I been on the wrong side of the law and it ain’t no fun. They catch me and ship me away to some lousy jug and that’s that for five, maybe ten years. I’m sick of it. It’s getting boring, that’s what it is.”

“I’m glad you have seen the error of your ways,” Larry said.

“That’s what I’ve seen,” Buggy said, nodding vigorously. “The error of my ways and means. My means, in particular, have been lousy with errors, if you get what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Larry said. “It’s like this. A smart crook is a guy who don’t get caught; right?”

“That seems logical.”

“Now,” the little man continued warmly, “the smart crooks who don’t get caught didn’t just get that way by accident. They figure everything out, they case all the angles and they don’t take no unnecessary chances. So they don’t get caught, get it.”

“It all seems to follow,” Larry said. “Pray, go on.”

“Okay, chum, listen good. From now on I’m playin’ it smart. I’m casing all the angles. I’m figuring all the details. I’m looking before I leap.”

Larry stood up and smiled.

“I think you are in the wrong pew, Mr. Rafferty. While I am naturally delighted with this ambitious attitude of yours, I fail to see how it concerns me. Possibly you could find a more sympathetic attitude at some reform school, where the inmates would probably be happy to absorb any little trade secrets you could pass along. As for me, I am on the right side of the law and I find my position comfortable. I am not a reformer by nature but I might suggest that you would do well to join me. It makes for better nerves and sounder sleep to know that the gendarmes are not sniffing on your trail. You are at liberty to correct me if gendarmes do not sniff, but it has been my opinion that they do.”

“I ain’t talking just to waste my breath, chum,” Buggy said quietly. “I got a very definite purpose behind this kind of rambling introduction. You and me, chum, is going into a partnership of sorts. I’ve got a little deal lined up and I need you bad.”

“That is going to make your disappointment more acute,” Larry said sadly.

“There ain’t goin’ to be any disappointment,” Buggy said. He was no longer smiling. “That dame that just left here has got a fortune in ice out at her Pineknoll estate.”

“Ice?”

“Ice. Diamonds, to you. She’s got one in particular that’s worth a striptease queen’s ransom. And I’ve had me eye on it for months, but I couldn’t figure any safe way of cracking into her joint. You see I’m figuring all the angles like I said. I’m playing it smart, waiting till I get a foolproof scheme worked out. And I got it now. But I need you, chum.”

“You have been walking in the sun too much and too long, I’m afraid,” Larry said. “What makes you think I’d help you steal Miss Manners’ valuables?”

“This,” Buggy said. He drew out a very large, very ugly looking gun from his pocket.

“My gracious,” Larry said, “you’d have to mount that before you could fire it.”

“I do all right with it in my hand,” Buggy said cheerfully. “Now are you goin’ to be nice, chum?”

“I don’t know,” Larry said truthfully. He thought a moment. “Would you really shoot me with that thing?”

“It would break my heart,” Buggy said, “but that wouldn’t stop me.”

“What do you want me to do?” Larry asked.

“That’s the spirit, chum. I been tailing Miss Manners for weeks trying to figure out an angle to get into her home without creatin’ no suspicions. I was listening outside when she proposed her little deal to you. Now you’re goin’ to have an assistant when you go down to do your little act.”

“But I don’t need an assistant,” Larry said reasonably.

“This time you do,” Buggy corrected him softly. “And said assistant is none other than Buggy Rafferty, late—”

“Of Atlanta and Leavenworth,” Larry finished the sentence with a weary sigh.

“That’s right, chum. That way I get into the house without any one suspecting a thing. I find this hunk of ice, cop it and blow. Before it’s missed I’ll be in South America bein’ a good neighbor to some of them Pampas patooties with plenty of chicken feed to feed the chickens. Now, how does it sound to you?”

“Terrible,” Larry said.

“That’s just an amateur viewpoint,” Buggy said equably. “Anyway, what you think of the idea ain’t so important. All you got to do is cooperate.”

“Supposing I would go immediately to the police and tell them all that you have told me,” Larry said thoughtfully. “What would happen then?”

“A lot of things.” Buggy said cheerfully. “All of them would be unpleasant and all of them would happen to you. But what good would it do you to squeal? Who’d believe you? You got any witnesses?”

“I have an honest face,” Larry said, clutching at straws.

“So have most of the mugs in Alcatraz,” Buggy said, grinning.

Larry sighed despairingly. He looked at the big gun in Buggy’s hand.

“I can’t think with that cannon in my face,” he said moodily. “Sight it on something else, will you?”

Buggy slipped the gun back into his pocket.

“Anything to oblige,” he said. “But don’t forget it’s within easy reach.” Larry thought for several minutes and got nowhere. There was nothing he could do about the situation immediately. The only possible course was to string along with Buggy and hope to turn the tables on him before he went south with the beautiful girl’s diamonds.

And that course wasn’t the best of all possible courses, by a darn sight.

“Okay,” he sighed, “get yourself a social security number. You’re working for me now. And be ready to leave Friday afternoon for Pineknoll.”

“I been packed for weeks,” Buggy grinned. He opened the door. “Don’t do anything foolish, chum. You wouldn’t look nice on a slab.”

“You have a good point there,” Larry said moodily.

The door closed on Buggy Rafferty. Larry sighed. In spite of all his trouble, he still wished he knew who had manipulated those damn puppets!

Chapter III

Colonel Marmaduke Manners’ estate was a vast sprawling affair covering several dozen acres of choice wooded land, replete with formal gardens, elaborate fountains and bird baths.

The home was built on the crest of a sloping hill. Winding lanes led from the road, through avenues of stately trees, and up to the majestic porticos of the house.

Seen for the first time, the home and grounds were an impressive sight.

Larry and Buggy Rafferty were duly impressed.

They were seated in the rear of a shining oak-paneled station wagon which was driven by an elderly Negro, who had been with the colonel’s family for two generations.

Buggy leaned back and sighed expansively.

“Nifty, ain’t it?”

The car was winding through stately parks and gardens that surrounded the colonel’s home, and in the distance the majestic gables of the house were visible above the tops of the trees.

Larry looked distastefully at his companion. Buggy was wearing a wildly designed sports coat over a mauve turtle neck sweater. A mangled cigar jutted from his mouth.

“‘Nifty’ is just the word I was thinking of,” Larry said dryly.

The Negro driver brought the car to a stop at the side door of the palatial home and Buggy and Larry climbed out. Larry had shipped his puppet booth down earlier in the week and he was anxious to find out whether it had arrived safely.

The wide, paneled door opened and Gloria Manners appeared. She smiled a welcome to him. She was wearing a trim sports suit and low-heeled oxfords. Her honey-colored hair was carelessly wind-blown.

Larry sighed. Never in his life had he seen anything more exquisite.

“Hello,” she said. “Your apparatus got here yesterday. I had one of the gardners unpack it and set it up in the sun-room. I hope that was all right.”

“That’s fine,” Larry said. “Saves me a job.”

The girl was looking rather curiously at Buggy, who stood beside Larry twisting a red jockey’s cap in his big hands.

“Oh, this is my helper, Mr. Rafferty,” Larry explained hastily. “I forgot to tell you about him.”

“How do you do?” Gloria said. Her eyes were moving in polite astonishment over the little man’s incredible clothes.

“Pleased to meet cha, ma’m,” Buggy said cordially.

Larry put a hand on his shoulder and smiled innocently.

“Mr. Rafferty does all the heavy work for me,” he said. “There won’t be anything for him to do since you have taken care of my outfit; so,” he patted Buggy on the back, “maybe there’s some work around here he can do.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the girl said. She turned to the elderly Negro. “Rastus, will you take Mr. Rafferty to the kitchen?” Maybe you can find something to keep him occupied.”

Rastus rubbed his big, horny hands. He did not approve of Buggy Rafferty and it was obvious that his mistress’ assignment gave him deep pleasure.

“Yassum,” he said, smiling. “I’ll keep him busy. Ain’t nobody touched dat woodpile for days now. He can start on dat.” He turned to Buggy. “Come on, you.”

Buggy looked darkly at Larry.

“Much obliged, chum,” he muttered under his breath. He shuffled off after the Negro, the cigar in his mouth wagging angrily.

Gloria took Larry by the arm.

“You must come in and meet Father now.”

“Fine,” Larry said.

His vague misgivings in regard to the colonel were not eased when he entered into the huge, high-ceilinged library with Gloria at his side, and saw a tall, broad-shouldered old man, with fierce white mustaches standing in front of the fireplace with a great, blue-barrelled rifle in his hands.

The old man had steel blue eyes and a jaw that looked like Gibraltar.

“Shot and shell are for sissies,” he was thundering to some invisible auditor as Gloria and Larry entered the room. He waved the huge gun about impatiently. “For a real, honest-to-God battle give me cold steel. A man—”

He broke off in mid-sentence and peered at his daughter.

“Ah, there you are,” he said in a milder voice. “Dereck and I were talking about you.”

Gloria smiled. “How did I manage to squeeze into a conversation on the relative merits of cold steel and shot-and-shell?”

Dereck stood up and bowed gallantly. He had been seated in a high-backed chair facing the colonel.

“There’s room for you, my dear, in any conversation,” he said, fairly exuding charm from every pore. He was dressed in formal riding clothes and he seemed to realize that he cut quite a dashing figure.

Gloria led Larry forward.

“Father, this is the young man I was telling you about.”

Larry shook hands with the colonel and he found himself staring into a pair of frosty blue eyes that were like chilled lake water.

“Yes, yes,” the old man muttered, “I remember you telling me about him. How are you, young fellow?”

“Fine, thank you, sir,” Larry said, breathing a little more easily, as the colonel stood the huge elephant gun against the fireplace.

“What do you do for a living?” the colonel asked bluntly, when he turned back to Larry. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his bushy eyebrows were drawn together over his piercing eyes.

Gloria said quickly, “I told you all about him, Father. He’s an entertainer. He’s going to perform at the party tomorrow night.”

“What kind of an entertainer?” the colonel asked.

“I’m a puppeteer,” Larry explained apologetically. He didn’t know quite why but his occupation suddenly seemed rather shameful.

“A what?”

“A puppeteer, sir. I manipulate puppets by string control and make them do all sorts of things.”

The colonel frowned.

“What sort of things?”

Larry loosened his collar.

“Well, I make them hit each other over the head and walk as if they’re drunk and—” His voice trailed off weakly and he cleared his throat desperately. “Things like that,” he added feebly. He was all too conscious of how silly his work must seem to a fire-belching colonel.

“I see,” the colonel said. He glanced at Dereck and smiled. “Interesting, what?”

“Very,” Dereck said smoothly. “Someone has to keep the women and children entertained while the men are away fighting the war, I suppose.” Larry restrained an impulse to kick Dereck squarely in the stomach. He said nothing of the knee that had caused his rejection from the Army, Navy and Marines. That was a little something he kept pretty close to himself.

“Of course,” Dereck continued smoothly, “when I was fighting in India we were too busy to worry about the morale of the people back home. We had enough trouble staying alive without worrying about anything else.”

“You’ve mentioned that before. Dereck,” Gloria said quietly. She turned to Larry. “Maybe you’d be willing to show us how your act works. Sort of a preview of tomorrow night. Everything’s all set up in the sun-room, just off the library.”

“I’d be glad to,” Larry said.

She led him across the library and through an arched doorway into a solarium. His puppet booth was in the center of this room and his three puppets, Pat, Mike and Tim were sprawled on the tiny stage.

Dereck and the colonel followed them, and Larry heard the colonel’s clarion voice growling vaguely about a sabre charge in the Crimea in which he participated; and in between these blasts he could hear Dereck’s smooth voice relating some bit of personal daring that he had accomplished in the air above Tobruk.

He sighed and there was envy in the sigh. Naturally the old man and Dereck would be as thick as thieves, since they had a sort of military bond between them.

“Oh, they’re cute,” Gloria cried, as Larry gathered the controlling strings of the puppets in his hands and lifted them to a standing position. With dexterously sensitive fingers he set them jigging.

The colonel shoved his craggy face close to the dancing puppets.

“I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life,” he growled.

“They’re the most stupid looking things a person could imagine. They look silly. Whoever made them must have been dumb and blind.”

His fiercely scowling face was within an inch of the puppet at the left end of the line. This was the puppet Larry had dubbed Mike, because of the merrily belligerent expression carved on his little wooden face.

An odd thing happened then.

The foot of this puppet flew out with sudden malicious speed.

And its hard wooden shoe landed squarely on the tip of the colonel’s red-veined, beaked nose!

The colonel straightened with a roar that set the floor trembling. He glared in raging accusation at the puppet that had kicked him.

“It — it assaulted me!” he roared.

“Don’t be silly, Father,” Gloria said soothingly. “How could a puppet do anything like that? They’re just little wooden figures. Their actions are completely controlled by Larry.”

“So that’s it!” the colonel bellowed.

He wheeled on Larry who was still holding the puppets’ strings in his hands.

“I presume, young man, that that is your idea of a joke,” he shouted wrathfully.

He drew himself up to his full impressive height and his eyes pierced Larry like twin needles.

“It might interest you to know,” he said scathingly, “that I happen to regard practical joking as the external expression of a low, perverted intellect.”

He turned on his heel and marched stiffly from the room. After a discreet interval Dereck followed suit. His attitude indicated plainly that he shared the colonel’s opinion.

Gloria was looking at Larry with wonder in her blue eyes. “Why did you have to do that, Larry?”

“Do what?”

“Make that puppet kick Father.” Larry’s expression was slightly dazed. “I–I didn’t. Anyway I don’t think I did.”

The girl’s expression was an interesting blend of exasperation and amusement. “Don’t be silly! It could hardly have kicked him of its own accord.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Larry. “I mean, you’re right. But I don’t see how—” His voice trailed off.

The entrance of the butler with the announcement that dinner was served, ended the conversation on that note of uncertainty.

Except for the excellent food, dinner proved to be something of an ordeal. The colonel, evidently still smarting from Larry’s attempt on his dignity, had drawn into a shell. Dereck managed to monopolize Gloria by means of a steady flow of light conversation that definitely held no place for Larry.

Afterward, the young puppeteer, tired, puzzled and vaguely depressed, slowly mounted the stairs to his room. He undressed wearily and got into bed. But he couldn’t sleep. There were too many disquieting thoughts buzzing about in his head. And chief among these disturbing figments was his concern over what had happened to Mike. He was certainly acting in a peculiar fashion and he could think of no reasonable explanation for the puppet’s conduct. If anything happened tomorrow night during the big show...

He tossed restlessly. Sleep seemed an elusive thing that was farther away than ever. When he heard the great clock in the lower hall mournfully chiming two o’clock, he decided that there was no longer any point in staying in bed.

He got up and slipped into his bathrobe and slippers. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed smoking moodily. The cigarette tasted foul. He put it out and lit another.

After a few moments he stood up, deciding that he had better go downstairs and see that everything was all right with his equipment.

He felt better having something definite to do. He put out his cigarette and left his room as quietly as possible. The house was dark and heavy with a tomb-like silence.

Larry found the carved stair banister and guided himself down to the first floor. He picked his way carefully through the library and when he reached the sun-room he turned on one of the floor lamps.

A shadow moved away from the wall. The end of a glowing cigar was visible in the semi-gloom.

“Greetings, chum,” a voice said.

“It’s you again,” Larry said wearily, as Buggy Rafferty moved out into the light, blinking his little eyes against the soft glare.

He was wearing crimson pajamas with a yellow sash and a light tan dressing gown with green felt lapels. His hands were jammed into the pockets of the gown and Larry detected a significant bulge under the right pocket.

“That was a crummy trick you played on me today, chum,” he said in an injured voice, “but I ain’t sore, honest. This way I gets to gab with the help and find out the lay of the land.”

“What are you doing prowling about the house this time of night?” Larry asked stiffly.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Buggy grinned. “But I ain’t the nosey type. I’m just doin’ a little research work, that’s all. Checkin’ the burglar alarms and things like that. Can’t be too careful these days. That Rastus kept me so busy cuttin’ wood and hauling garbage that this is the first chance I got to look the joint over. And from what Fve seen, it’s goin’ to be a lead-pipe cinch.”

“How dandy,” Larry said gloomily.

Until now he had forgotten about Buggy. He had been so worried about the peculiar behavior of his puppet that all other thoughts had been driven from his mind. His spirits sank. For a while he had been kidding himself with the delightful prospects of seeing Gloria the next day and possibly making hay while the sun shone.

But his name would be mud when Buggy copped her diamonds and blew the country. Naturally he would be held responsible for that. If he escaped a nice smacking twenty-year sentence he’d be lucky.

“Well, be good, chum,” Buggy said. “I’m goin’ back to my honest slumber. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Good night,” Larry said dully. The chances of Buggy strangling in the bed clothes were too remote to be cheering. All he could hope for was something developing tomorrow that would enable him to pull Buggy’s claws.

He would like to do it with pliers, he thought bitterly.

When Buggy had left, Larry turned his attention to his puppet booth. And here he was in for another shock.

The strings that led to two o£ the puppets were badly twisted and snarled. But that was not the worst.

The two puppets were gone!

Larry felt his scalp prickling with a strange fear. He turned on the high lights in the room and returned to his booth to make a thorough inspection of the damage.

Only one puppet was in evidence.

Tim, the puppet who took the role of the naive, innocent party in the little skits, was still present, but Pat and Mike, the two hellions, were gone without a trace.

Tim was sitting on the edge of the tiny stage, a prop match and cigarette in his hands. There was a peculiarly doleful expression on the little face.

Larry picked the puppet up and examined it carefully. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it for all the manipulating strings were still attached and in good order.

Larry set Tim on his shoulder and manipulated the wooden arms, legs and neck of the tiny puppet to make sure that everything was in good working order.

He was slightly reassured to discover that Tim at least was all right, but he couldn’t put on a show with only one puppet.

He stared bitterly at the deserted stage and the snarled ropes.

“I wonder where the hell they are,” he said angrily.

“They’re gone,” a small voice said in his ear.

“I know that,” Larry said irritably, “but where—”

Words jammed up in his throat and stuck there. An unpleasant shudder traveled down his spine.

Had someone spoken?

Or was he going batty?

“I know where they’ve gone,” the small voice said. “They wanted me to go with them but I didn’t think it was right.”

There was no doubt in his mind now.

He turned his head slowly, carefully, as if he were afraid that his neck might splinter. His eyes met the shining button eyes of Tim, the little puppet.

“Did you say something?” Larry whispered.

“Yes,” Tim answered. His voice was clearly audible. It was small and rough, but not unpleasant. “I said I knew where Pat and Mike have gone. They asked me to come with them but I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

“That’s what I thought you said,” Larry said weakly. Perspiration was pouring down his forehead in tiny rivulets. His mind felt as if it were rocking on its foundations.

This was incredible! Yet it seemed to be happening.

“Why didn’t you go with Mike and Pat?” he asked. It was a silly question but Larry hadn’t had much conversational experience with puppets. He was at a loss as to just the right approach.

“I didn’t think it would be right,” Tim repeated. “I am supposed to act in shows. I want to do what is right.”

“I am glad you do,” Larry said. He had the inane feeling he was making a perfect fool of himself. The proper procedure, he felt sure, would be to ignore Tim completely and go to bed. This thing couldn’t be happening. It was all a product of his imagination.

Then he remembered the night at the theatre when the puppets had gone through their act without him; and he remembered the scene earlier that evening when one of the puppets had kicked Colonel Manners in the nose.

These recollections gave him pause. “How long has this been going on,” he asked Tim, in what he hoped was a severe voice. But it sounded like a croak to his ears.

“How long has what been going on?” Tim asked.

“This — this nonsense,” Larry said. “This business of you puppets taking things into your own hands.”

“Not long,” Tim answered. “We came to life sort of gradually. The first night was when we put on the show at the theatre without you.”

“So you did that, did you?” Larry asked.

“Yes. We were pretty good, too. Better, I guess, than when you ran things.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Larry said.

“I didn’t think we ought to let anybody know about us coming alive, but I couldn’t make Pat and Mike see it my way. They think they’re going to have a lot of fun now.”

“This is terrible,” Larry whispered. “How’d you happen to become animated in the first place?”

“We were made from the wood of a carnivorous tree,” Tim explained. “It was inevitable.”

“I see,” Larry said. If this wasn’t the damnedest thing!

Another thing occurred to him then. “Where did Pat and Mike go?” he asked. He felt that he should have asked that question immediately.

“They went to find the nasty man with the white mustaches,” Tim answered.

“The colonel?”

“They didn’t like him,” Tim said. “He called us stupid and silly. Mike and Pat felt very hurt. They were going to do something about it.”

“Good God!” Larry groaned. “How long have they been gone.”

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “I can’t tell time.”

Larry lifted the puppet from his shoulder and put him back on the stage. He had to stop Mike and Pat somehow.

“What were they going to do to the colonel?” he demanded.

“They were going to puncture the hot water bottle in his bed,” Tim giggled. “All they needed was a needle. They figured he would be pretty surprised when the water leaked out in the middle of the night.”

Larry groaned. This would certainly put him in solid with the colonel. The old ram-rod would naturally blame him for anything that happened. The only thing he could do was to try and stop Mike and Pat before it was too late.

He shook a finger sternly at Tim. “You stay here, you understand?”

“Yes. I am waiting for the show to go on. I want to do what is right.” Larry patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Good boy,” he said. “I wish the others were like you.”

He switched off the light and hurried back through the library and up the stairs. The upper floors were dark and he had to feel his way along, but he remembered Gloria saying that the colonel’s room was across the hall from his own, and that made his job simpler.

He hesitated at the door of the colonel’s room. He had a normal amount of courage but there was something about invading the sanctity of the old boy’s boudoir that unnerved him. Still, every man has his Rubicon to cross, and Larry was no exception.

With a silent prayer he gently opened the door and eased himself into the darkened room.

Chapter IV

The only sound that disturbed the stillness of the room was the slightly asthmatic breathing of the colonel. This stertorous noise emanated from one corner of the room and Larry rightly presumed that the old gentleman was lying there in bed, enjoying his well-earned rest.

So far so good.

Apparently Mike and Pat hadn’t gotten this far.

This comforting thought was blasted an instant later as Larry heard a slight scuffling sound at the foot of the colonel’s bed, followed by a muffled snicker.

Pat and Mike were obviously on deck and up to no good.

Larry moved cautiously toward the looming shadow of the bed. Tim had mentioned that the two obstreperous puppets, Pat and Mike, were planning some shenanigans with the hot water bottle at the foot of the colonel’s bed.

Obviously the quickest way to circumvent their scheme would be to simply remove the hot water bottle. That, to Larry, seemed the essence of logic.

With this idea in mind he carefully lifted the covers at the foot of the bed and began a cautious search for the bottle.

He felt something bump against his foot and he heard a giggling laugh somewhere from the region under the bed. He swore softly and continued his search, trying desperately to locate the rubber bottle without awakening the colonel.

But the best-laid plans can go awry, as Larry discovered to his sorrow. His hand encountered a welling puddle of water at the foot of the bed and at the same there was an enraged bellow from the colonel.

Larry froze in his tracks. All of his common-sense instincts were screaming at him to flee; but he was powerless to move. He stood like a man in a trance as the bedclothes threshed about and the colonel’s bulky shadow loomed black against the darkness as he sat bolt upright in bed.

There was a snap of an electric switch and then there was light.

The colonel stared in apoplectic bewilderment at Larry. His white mustaches were bristling with outraged indignation. And in one gnarled hand he held a huge black pistol which was pointed unwaveringly at Larry’s midriff.

“What, sir,” he said, in a strangled, hoarse voice, “is the meaning of this?”

Larry made futile efforts to speak.

His mouth opened. His tongue went through the accepted motions but no words broke the silence. He waved his hands desperately and eloquently; but it takes a lot of hand-waving to explain anything, let alone a situation as complicated and embarrassing as that confronting Larry.

The colonel watched with the sort of disgusted interest a person might bestow upon a creature scurrying from beneath a damp rock.

“I presume you have something to say,” he said with icy deliberation.

Larry continued to flutter his hands helplessly. It was all he could do.

“If those are semaphore signals you may discontinue them,” the colonel said with terrible calmness.

He threw back the covers of the bed and stood up, towering like Biblical figure of wrath in his flowing nightdress and disordered white hair.

He inspected the condition of his bed with ominous quiet. His eye moved over the hot water bottle which was punctured in a dozen places with tiny needle pricks; his jaw tightened spasmodically as he viewed the soaked mattress and sheets.

Gleaming guiltily in the center of the spreading patch of dampness was a large darning needle.

The colonel picked up the needle between his thumb and forefinger. He extended it toward Larry.

“Yours, I believe,” he said stiffly.

Larry accepted the needle dumbly. His voice was beginning to return to normalcy.

“This is all a terrible mistake,” he said. The words popped out in a stuttering rush.

The colonel eyed him coldly from under lowering brows.

“You are absolutely right,” he said. “This is a terrible mistake for you, my young friend.” His tone of voice could have been used by a Judge sentencing an ax-slayer to life imprisonment.

“You don’t understand, sir,” Larry said desperately. “I came here to prevent someone from puncturing your hot water bottle.”

“So?” The colonel’s brows arched coldly. “And who is this ‘someone’ who was interested in doing that?” Larry sputtered and again no words were forthcoming. He couldn’t explain to the colonel about the animated puppets. The man would think he had lost his mind.

“I can’t say,” he blurted. “But you must believe me. I didn’t do this.”

The colonel laid aside his gun and there was a noticeable touch of regret in the gesture.

“One doesn’t shoot one’s guests,” he said quietly. He straightened and looked Larry coldly in the eye.

“Young man, I am a just and tolerant person. I do not believe that I am harsh or vindictive. Let us therefore review the facts as they stand. I am awakened in the middle of the night by a person to whom I have extended the hospitality of my home. I find that person standing at the foot of my bed with a darning needle in his hand. I find the hot water bottle, which I am accustomed to keep at the foot of my bed, punctured in a dozen places and myself, practically inundated by the contents of the aforementioned water bottle. I demand explanations. I receive a barrage of incoherent gibberish accompanied by wild gestures which should, in my considered opinion, be restricted in the future by a straitjacket. Those, briefly and with a commendable lack of profanity, are my conclusions. If you have nothing further to add—”

“Wait!” Larry cried. He had nothing further to add that would do him any good, but he didn’t want to be shipped off to the Siberian salt mines without raising a finger. “I’ll admit things look incriminating but—”

“Young man,” the colonel said in a dreadful whisper, “I am reaching certain limits in my capacity to endure your presence. I want you to leave my room. I want you to do without opening your mouth again. And in the morning I shall expect you to leave the premises of my home without a second’s delay. In my opinion, you are an addle-pated moron who would bite the hand that fed you, wear any man’s collar, desert a floundering ship™”

“You are mixing up your metaphors slightly, Colonel,” Larry said, in what he hoped was a gaily bantering spirit. He hoped this digression would get the colonel off on a less personal tangent, but he reckoned without the colonel’s military trained, one-track mind.

“And furthermore,” the colonel continued, gathering steam and pressure with each syllable and apparently not even hearing Larry’s diversion, “if you are not out of my sight in five seconds I shall forget my mother’s training and shoot you down like a dog!”

This seemed pretty definite. And Larry had no intention of giving the colonel the pleasure of drilling a few holes through him.

He broke for the door at a fast lope. When his hand hit the knob the colonel was reaching for his gun. Larry jerked open the door and closed it behind him with a relieved sigh.

He walked dejectedly to his own room. The fat was in the fire for good, now. On the morrow he would undoubtedly be thrown as far as the colonel’s retainers were able to pitch him.

He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.

Even the knowledge that Pat and Mike were still in the colonel’s room failed to disturb him. So what? he thought bitterly.

There was even a dry, bitter pleasure in speculating on what the little hellions might do next to bedevil the colonel.

“Maybe they’ll put sand in his shaving cream,” he thought.

The prospect brought a wan smile to his lips and he climbed into bed. In despair he went to sleep.

Chapter V

The next morning Larry was aroused from his uneasy sleep by a clamor of voices in the hallway outside his room. For a moment he lay in bed blinking at the ceiling, and then as the memory of the previous night flooded over him he groaned softly.

But his thoughts were distracted from his sorry plight for the moment by the babble and confusion that were audibly evident outside his door.

He got out of bed rather nervously. Maybe, he thought worriedly, the colonel had sent up a crew of strong-arm men to toss him out into the cold. But there was no attempt on the part of anyone to enter his room. Footsteps rushed back and forth outside his door; voices were raised and lowered, but through the discordant din Larry recognized one particular voice that surged over and above the others like the major theme in a symphony.

This predominant voice was unmistakable. Once having heard it the chances were good that a man would recognize it on his death bed.

For it was the voice of Colonel Manners raised in rage and anguish!

Larry listened for a few seconds with a sort of grudging admiration. The old boy really had a set of pipes! And he was surpassing himself this morning.

He wondered what had caused the outburst. For a while he toyed with speculations but finally his curiosity got the better of him and he put on his robe and slippers and headed for the door.

Half-way there he was arrested by the sound of a voice. A jolly voice which said, “You’d better keep away from the colonel for a while.”

Larry stopped in his tracks and then turned slowly.

Seated on his dresser were two small figures surveying him with bright, sparkling eyes. Larry recognized them instantly as Pat and Mike, the incorrigible puppets who had been missing from the booth the previous night.

They were fashioned the same as Tim, with cleverly jointed wooden arms, legs and bodies, but there was an unholy gleam in their button eyes that was lacking in Tim’s.

“What have you little devils been up to?” Larry demanded. “What have you done to the colonel now?”

Pat looked at Mike and a malicious grin split his mischievous features.

“He wants to know what we did to the colonel,” the puppet said to his companion.

Mike grinned too. “Tell him to go and ask the colonel,” Mike said. “And then tell him he’d better duck.”

Larry crossed the room in two quick strides and swept the puppets up in his hands. They struggled and kicked in helpless fury.

Larry glared at them. “I’m through playing around with you boys,” he said grimly. “I’m going to see to it that you behave.”

He jerked open the top drawer of the dresser and dumped them in on top of his shirts. Then he closed the drawer and locked it. He put the key in his pocket.

“That’ll hold you,” he muttered.

He could hear their faint cries from inside the drawer, but he hardened his heart and strode away. Opening the door of his room he stepped out into a scene of wild confusion.

Servants rushed back and forth with tense worried looks stamped on their faces. Larry noticed Dereck Miller pacing nervously in front of the colonel’s door.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Dereck chewed his lip anxiously.

“Hell to pay,” he said tensely, “the old boy’s lost his false teeth.”

“You don’t say,” Larry murmured.

Gloria appeared at that moment from the opposite end of the corridor. She was wearing a silver lace negligee and her bare feet were thrust into tiny silver mules.

“My maid just told me the bad news,” she said breathlessly. “We’ve got to do something.”

From inside the colonel’s room the wild bellowing was reminiscent of the trumpetings of a frustrated bull elephant. There was something terrifying and cosmic about the uproar issuing from the open transom.

Dereck put his hand on Gloria’s arm comfortingly.

“We’ll find them,” he said. His jaw was dramatically tense.

The door was suddenly flung open and the colonel appeared, a wild tragic figure. His hair was flying about his head and sparks of rage were shooting from his eyes.

The sight of Larry acted like a match touched to, gasoline on the colonel. He raised his clenched fists in the air and screamed like a denested eagle.

“This is your work,” he bellowed. “Where are my teeth?”

This appeal lost a bit of effectiveness since the colonel’s lips were writhing about loosely without the support of his store teeth. But the general idea got across.

“I don’t know—” began Larry.

“Get my teeth!” thundered the colonel.

Larry had a pretty good idea of what had happened to the colonel’s teeth. Pat and Mike had obviously copped them during the night. But Larry felt no particular desire to leap to the aid and succor of the colonel. In his opinion the old goat richly deserved whatever bad luck befell him and he was about to voice this sentiment when Gloria took his arm.

“Please,” she whispered, “If you can help him, I’ll be eternally grateful.”

Larry looked at her and his hardhearted resolve melted. With her hair sleep-tumbled about her face she was as lovely as a morning rose.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Get my teeth, you scoundrel,” bellowed the colonel, hopping from one gouty foot to the other in his rage.

Larry ducked back into his room and opened the drawer in which he had imprisoned the two puppets. He lifted them out paying no attention to their shrill accusing squawks.

“Okay,” he said, when they had exhausted their repertoire of abuse, “we’re through playing games. Where are they?”

“Where are what?” Mike asked surlily.

“Don’t play dumb,” Larry said sharply, “I want the colonel’s teeth. Give!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pat mumbled.

“Oh, yes you do,” Larry said grimly. “And you’re going to tell me where they are.”

“Supposing we don’t?” Mike said sullenly.

Larry picked up his cigarette lighter from the top of the dresser. He flicked on the light and watched the blue-hot flame lick greedily into the air.

The two puppets watched the flame also, and there was a sudden anxiety in their button-like eyes.

“I am not a monster,” Larry said calmly, “but I would have no scruples about giving each of you fellows a hotfoot, if necessary, to find out what I want to know. A hot-foot in your case would probably be fatal, but I can’t help that.”

Mike twisted uneasily in his hand. Pat did likewise.

“Who wants any old false teeth?” Mike said suddenly.

“I don’t,” Pat said promptly.

“Start talking,” Larry said.

“They’re in the top drawer,” Mike said. “Please put out that lighter. It’s giving me heart burn.”

Larry put out the lighter and tossed the puppets back into the drawer beside his shirts. He closed the drawer and locked it. Then he opened the top drawer and the first sight that met his eyes was the colonel’s very large, very white and very false set of teeth.

With them in his hand he returned to the excited group clustered about the colonel’s drawer.

Gloria saw him first. Her eyes lighted when she saw the teeth in his hand.

“Oh, you’re wonderful!” she cried.

The colonel stamped out of his room and when he saw his teeth in Larry’s hand he grabbed them like a wolf snatching meat from a trap.

He fitted them into his mouth and then he swung on Larry. His mouth opened and closed. His face purpled with his efforts at speech.

Finally he gave up.

He pointed toward the door.

“Go!” he hissed. The word seemed to seep up from the soles of his feet and it had collected plenty of venom by the time if passed through the colonel’s body and cracked out in the air about Larry’s ears.

“You said it more effectively last night,” Larry said dryly.

With an indignant wheeze the colonel padded back into his room. Larry was about to do likewise, sans the indignant wheeze when Gloria put her hand on his shoulder.

“Please don’t go yet,” she said hurriedly. “I’m sure I can talk Father out of his bad mood. We need you for the show tonight. I’ll be in a terrible mess if you don’t stay. Please, just for me?”

What could Larry do?

He shrugged. “Okay. But I’ll be packing just in case.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs in the main hallway in a half hour,” Gloria said. “Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”

“I stopped worrying hours ago,” Larry said ironically. “It’s up to Fate now.”

Gloria smiled comfortingly at him and then went into her father’s room and closed the door. Larry shrugged and went back to his own room to begin packing. There was only one thing he was worried about.

The colonel might shoot Gloria.

The fact that she was his daughter would probably be only an extra inducement to the fire-belching, hard-headed, stiff-necked old goat!

Chapter VI

Larry was waiting in the hallway when Gloria came down the wide curving steps, smiling triumphantly.

“Everything’s all set,” she said. “I explained to Father that we simply couldn’t do without you tonight, and since the proceeds of the party are for Army relief, he couldn’t very well say no.

She had changed into a simple tweed suit, but he had never seen her looking quite so fresh and lovely.

“You look sweet enough to ration,” he grinned.

She looked at him quickly, slightly startled. Then she smiled. “Isn’t it a little early in the morning for pretty speeches?”

“In your case,” he said, “I don’t imagine it’s ever too early. The average girl doesn’t look quite up to par in the morning, but you look as if you’d spent the night sleeping in the bell of a flower.”

“If I had,” she laughed, “I’d be wrinkled and messy and have dew in my hair.”

She glanced out the window.

“It’s raining a little, but it’s still a nice morning. Would you like to take a walk before breakfast? You haven’t seen any of the grounds yet.”

“Sounds like a wonderful idea,” Larry said. He felt his spirits not only rising, but soaring. That was what a few seconds of this lovely girl’s company did to him, he thought with a slight touch of wonder.

In spite of all the things that happened and were still scheduled to happen he felt illogically and gloriously happy. When Buggy Rafferty and the puppets got through with him this evening, he would probably be slated for free room and board at Atlanta for the next few years, but he didn’t give a damn. Right now he was going for a walk with the most beautiful girl in the world and it had been her suggestion.

Maybe he did have a chance. The thought that this glorious creature could ever return his affection was crazy and unthinkable but Larry, being human, felt hope kindling in his heart.

She got him an umbrella and they went outside. The air was bracingly keen and the misting rain transformed the grounds into a dewy fairyland. On the eastern horizon the sun was crawling sleepily from a blanket of soft clouds and the first long lances of light created a million diamond-bright sparklings in the wet trees and grass.

Larry breathed deeply.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” the girl said.

“Absolutely tops.” He grinned down at her. “Let’s take a look at the gardens. Maybe I can find that flower you slept in last night.”

“I hope you don’t,” she said. “I forgot to make the bed.”

They walked hand in hand across the smooth, landscaped lawn until they came to the riotously colorful gardens. Under the shelter of a lane of trees, they paused. She stood close enough to him so that when he leaned forward a soft strand of hair blew across his face.

She turned slightly and looked up at him, her eyes dark and serious.

“I was wondering,” she said softly, “why this has been so much fun. Is it just the garden and the rain, or is there some other reason?”

“I think there’s another reason,” Larry said. He knew that this was his moment of opportunity and it might never come again. He put his hands on her slim shoulders and smiled down into her eyes.

“What reason is that?” she asked, and her voice caught breathlessly on the words.

Larry started to say the things that had been in his heart forever, but before he could open his mouth he felt a sharp dig in his left ankle.

He winced involuntarily; but the girl didn’t notice. Her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly parted.

Larry glanced down and saw Tim standing on the ground between his feet, carrying a postcard which was bigger than he was. A sharp flash of panic stabbed him. This was no time for Gloria to find out about his animated puppets.

He shoved Tim away with his foot, but the little puppet returned doggedly and began pulling at his trouser leg.

“What were you going to say, Larry?” Gloria asked softly.

Larry shook Tim loose and kicked him as gently as possible into the bushes that bordered the trees.

“I was going to say we’d better be going,” he said hoarsely. “It’s raining. Might get wet.”

Gloria opened her eyes. A spot of color appeared in each cheek. She stared for an instant at Larry with eyes that were hurt and angry.

“I’m sorry I’ve kept you out,” she said evenly. “Forgive me.”

She turned and walked quickly away through the rain toward the house. Larry started after her, but a small voice checked him.

Tim was crawling out of the bushes still carrying the postcard.

“What’s the idea?” he demanded in an injured voice.

“I might ask you the same question,” Larry said bitterly. “You’ve just ruined the best love scene since ‘Birth of a Nation’.”

“I am determined to be useful,” Tim said doggedly.

“What are you doing with that postcard?”

“I am delivering it. Mail must be delivered and I am determined to be useful.”

Larry bent down wearily and took the postcard from the little puppet. It was not addressed to him. It was addressed to the colonel.

“This isn’t for me,” he said disgustedly.

“I don’t know much about mail yet,” said Tim, “but I can learn.”

“Stop trying to be useful,” Larry said. “Go back to the booth and keep out of trouble. I’ve got enough on my mind without having to worry about you.”

“Fine thing,” Tim said disgustedly. “There’s no room for private initiative any more. That’s what the WPA did.”

“Scat!” Larry said.

Tim trudged off moodily in the direction of the house and Larry was left alone with the misting rain and the garden. The rain got down his neck and the garden looked like a surrealist’s nightmare.

He shivered and went back to his room.

There he made another disquieting discovery.

Pat and Mike were gone. Somehow, they had gotten out of the drawer. There was no way of knowing where they were or what sadistic devilment they were planning.

“Nuts!” said Larry Temple, distinctly and loudly.

Chapter VII

Formally clad guests began arriving at about eight o’clock that evening for Gloria’s party. There was a bustle and stir in the big home as servants moved quickly about, passing drinks and answering the door. At the foot of the broad winding stairs stood the colonel and Gloria, greeting the guests as they arrived.

The colonel wore evening clothes and his left breast was decorated with silk ribbons and various campaign stripes. He looked very distinguished and every inch the great retired soldier as he bowed and smiled to the women and shook hands with the men.

Gloria, at his side, was a ravishing vision in a gleaming white formal that transformed her slender body into a flowing picture of perfection. Suspended from her slender throat was a magnificent diamond.

But while she smiled and chatted readily with the stream of guests that passed, there was sadness in the haunting depths of her eyes.

Larry noticed all this from the top of the stairs.

He was standing there in the semidarkness trying to work up enough courage to go down and face the crowd and Gloria and the colonel. Particularly the colonel.

The puppets were still missing; Buggy Rafferty had not yet disclosed what his plans were for the evening; and the colonel would most likely shoot on sight. But Larry had almost reached the saturation point as far as worry was concerned. He had been through too much. With a fatalistic shrug he decided to let the future take care of itself.

He descended the stairs slowly.

Gloria looked up at him and for an instant there was a strange light in her eyes. Then she composed her features in a polite mask and smiled coldly.

“Nice of you to come down,” she murmured. “The entertainment is scheduled to start at nine o’clock, you know.”

“I can hardly wait,” Larry said drily.

The colonel turned to him with a smile and extended his hand.

“Nice to have you with us tonight, sir. Please make yourself at home and feel free—”

He recognized Larry then and his hand fell to his side. The smile hardened on his craggy face. His mustaches bristled alarmingly.

“Will you be good enough to remove yourself from my presence,” he snarled. “I refuse to be responsible for the consequences if I am forced to endure more of your company, sir!”

Larry regarded the colonel for an instant with level eyes. He was getting thoroughly fed up with this pompous old goat’s domineering bluster.

“I suggest, sir,” he said courteously, “that you take a running jump in the lake for yourself.”

He turned and strode away, deriving some consolation from the startled, incredulous expression that had registered on the colonel’s seamy features.

He avoided the groups of drinking guests in the drawing room and went on through the library into the sun room. There he stared gloomily at his puppet booth. Tim was seated on the stage looking rather blue, but of Pat and Mike there was no sign.

A door opened and Buggy Rafferty appeared.

“Hiya, chum?” he said affably.

Larry looked at the man and winced. He was wearing a camel’s, hair sport coat and green slacks. A yellow tie stood out gruesomely against a red shirt. He was smoking his inevitable cigar and packing his inevitable pistol.

“Nice to see you again,” Larry said.

“Tonight’s the night,” Buggy said, cheerily. “I got everything set. Did you notice that diamond pendant the filly is wearing?”

“You mean Miss Manners, I presume?”

“Don’t get hoity-toity. It ain’t becoming. That rock is what I got my eyes on. And everything is set perfectly.”

“Fine,” Larry said despairingly. He left the sunroom moodily.

He wandered into the drawingroom and observed the antics of the guests with a gloomy eye. In a corner of the room, Dereck, sleek and immaculate in tails, was spellbinding an awed group of young girls with tales of his exploits on far-flung and perilous battle fronts.

They were listening in thrilled fascination.

Larry sauntered past and Dereck’s smooth effective words reached him.

“...the Messerschmidt, I dare say, thought I was a goner. And at that particular moment I would have agreed with him. But...”

Larry drifted on and Dereck’s voice faded out. He felt no curiosity as to how Dereck had escaped the Nazi trap. The fact that he obviously had, destroyed his interest in the story.

He was standing in a deserted corner of the room, wondering how his personal and professional problems would eventually work out when he saw Gloria walk to the center of the room and raise her hands for attention.

Her announcement was brief.

“We have an interesting surprise for you,” she smiled at the guests. “From Broadway, we have been fortunate enough to secure the services of a very talented young man and he is now going to amuse us as only he can.”

She waved her hand toward the sunroom and two servants appeared shoving the puppet booth into the center of the room. With a graceful gesture she pointed to Larry, who was standing miserably against the wall.

“I think the young man deserves a hand,” she said brightly. “After all, he’s had nothing to do all day but walk around in the rain and that can’t have been very interesting.”

Larry moved out from the wall and bowed as the guests clapped politely. Walking past Gloria he murmured, “Keep your punches legal, chum.”

He proceeded to the puppet booth like a man marching the Last Mile. There was no way in the world he could put on an act with only Tim and he had no idea of where the other puppets, Pat and Mike were. They hadn’t put in an appearance since escaping from the drawer in his room that morning.

Delaying the inevitable moment when he must confess to these people that there wasn’t going to be any performance, he inspected carefully the strings that led to Tim. They were all in order. He fiddled around a little longer and he was conscious of a murmur of faint impatience from the guests.

He felt the back of his neck getting warm.

Dereck’s smooth voice drifted to him. “Our puppeteer seems to be having trouble. Out of puppies, I presume.”

This didn’t help any.

Finally he quit stalling. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth and then get the hell out of here. He turned and faced the roomful of expectant guests.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but—”

He got no farther for at that instant the lights suddenly went out and the room was plunged into darkness. There was a startled scream from a girl and a babble of men’s voices, over which the commanding tones of the colonel rode easily.

“Don’t be alarmed!” he bellowed, in a voice which would have terrified the stoutest heart. “The lights will be on in a moment.”

There was an uneasy rustle of movement in the crowd of guests and excited whispers flitted through the darkness.

Then from the center of the room there was a frightened gasp and a voice cried, “Someone’s stolen my necklace!”

Larry recognized the voice as Gloria’s.

“Somebody turn those damn lights on,” he shouted. He moved as quickly as he could through the darkness toward the sound of her voice. Someone collided with him, but before Larry could recognize the dim shape, the fellow had slipped past and was gone.

Then the lights went on again, as suddenly as they had gone out, and the roomful of guests stared at one another, blinking in the bright illumination.

Larry was standing directly in front of Gloria and he saw that her hands pressed against her throat and that the diamond pendant was gone. She was staring at him with wide eyes, dark and troubled against the whiteness of her face.

The colonel charged into the scene at that moment and with him was a dapper little man in a tuxedo.

“Are you all right, child?” the colonel demanded.

“Y-yes, I’m all right,” Gloria said slowly. She was still staring at Larry. “The moment the lights went out someone stepped up to me. I felt his hand at my throat for a second — and then my diamond pendant was gone.”

The dapper little man stepped forward. His eyes were sharp and hard.

“I’m representing the Allied Insurance Company, Miss Manners. I was sent here when the company learned that you were intending to wear your diamond tonight.” He looked at her keenly. “Why did you say you felt ‘his’ hand at your throat. Did you recognize the thief as a man?”

Gloria nodded slowly. She turned her eyes away from Larry.

“I know it was a man,” she said.

“Did you recognize him?” the insurance detective asked.

Gloria shook her head. “No.” She said the one word in a low voice.

Larry happened to glance through the arched doors that led to the hallway and he noticed a glaringly conspicuous figure moving toward the front door.

The conspicuous figure was Buggy Rafferty and he was tiptoeing toward the door as if he were walking on eggs. No one else had seen him.

“Just a minute, Buggy,” Larry said in a loud, clear voice.

Buggy halted in mid-step, his hand on the doorknob.

Larry nudged the insurance detective. “There’s your man,” he said.

Buggy turned slowly and faced the roomful of guests. His red, wrinkled face wore a look of faint surprise.

“Did someone call me?” he asked innocently.

The insurance detective looked uncertainly from Larry to Buggy.

“You’d better come in here,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Buggy came slowly into the room twisting his hat in his hands.

“Is anything the matter?” he asked. His little eyes were wide with innocent surprise. Larry began to feel slightly uneasy.

“Miss Manners’ necklace has been stolen,” the detective said.

“You don’t say so!” Buggy said indignantly. He shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s too bad.”

Larry said, “You can stop acting innocent, Buggy. Hand over the necklace.”

Buggy looked at him as if he hadn’t heard aright.

“What an awful thing to say, Mr. Temple,” he said sadly. “I—”

“Search him!” Larry said. But he was beginning to feel that something was radically wrong. And a few minutes later, when the detective had gone through Buggy’s pockets and found nothing — he knew that something was wrong.

The detective looked at Larry with unconcealed irritation.

“You had better be more careful with your accusations,” he said sharply.

Dereck moved into the picture then, shoving Larry slightly as he stepped into the circle surrounding Gloria.

“Our puppeteer must be forgiven,” he said ironically. “The exciting nature of his work keeps him in a rather unbalanced state. I have a suggestion to make that should straighten this mess out without any more delay. No one has left the room since the lights went on. Therefore I propose that we search those present. I, for one, am willing.”

There was a general murmur of assent from the guests.

“A capital idea,” the colonel said. He cleared his throat importantly. “And I insist that I be searched first.”

No one cared to dispute this honor with him, and the detective searched him quickly and deftly. Nothing was found.

“You’re okay,” the detective said.

“I thank you, sir,” the colonel said, with the air of a man who had been exonerated in a dramatic jury trial.

The detective then began searching the others, and the colonel moved along the line with him, ready to pounce on the thief if he should be revealed.

Buggy was standing next to Larry.

“Nice little double-cross, chum,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

“I would rather not discuss the matter,” Larry said. His thoughts were on the missing diamond. If Buggy didn’t have it on his person, he must have hidden it somewhere. But where? He would have to find out before Buggy disappeared with a clean bill of health — and the diamond.

The colonel and the detective would be searching them in a few moments now. They were only two guests away from Buggy and Larry.

Larry was in a hurry to get the thing over with. Impatiently he shoved his hands into his coat pocket. There was a round hard object in his right pocket. His fingers closed around it slowly.

His face began to get hot. There was suddenly a cold vacuum where his stomach should have been. Cautiously he removed his hand from the pocket and peeked at the object nestling in his fingers.

And he almost fainted on the spot.

For the object in his hand was Gloria’s pendant necklace!

How the diamond had gotten there, he couldn’t imagine; but he knew that this was not the time to speculate on such academic questions. The colonel and the detective were searching Buggy now and in an instant they would be going through his pockets.

He had to get rid of the diamond and he didn’t have a second to lose. While he was casting about feverishly in his mind for something more practical than popping the damned thing into his mouth, he felt a tug on his trouser leg.

Glancing down, he saw the tiny figure of the puppet, Tim, standing next to his shoe peering up at him. Larry shoved him away impatiently. This was no time for irrelevancies. And anything not definitely relating to the speedy disposition of that incriminating diamond was damned irrelevant.

But he reckoned without Tim’s persistence. The tug was repeated, determinedly.

“I want to so something useful,” Tim’s tiny voice floated up to him. “I am tired of being idle. I want something to do.”

An idea born of desperation popped into Larry’s head. The detective was turning to him when, with a fervent prayer, he dropped the diamond pendant to Tim. He couldn’t risk a glance to see what Tim would do with it.

All that was left to him was hope.

He met the detective’s sharp gaze with what blandness he could muster.

The colonel breathed noisily as he regarded Larry.

“Search this man carefully,” he ordered the detective. “He looks like the criminal type to me.”

“Teeth comfortable?” Larry inquired pleasantly of the old man. The remark scored a direct hit. The colonel’s cheeks flushed a violent pink. His fists clenched spasmodically.

“I wish I had you in my company for one day, young man,” he fumed. “I’d teach you the meaning of respect to your elders.”

“A man who expects respect simply because of his age, is headed for the grazing grounds of senility,” Larry said pleasantly. “According to your theory, sir, an Egyptian mummy should be practically idolized.”

The detective completed his search and turned to the colonel.

“Nothing there,” he said.

The colonel controlled his disappointment manfully, but his attitude indicated clearly that if Larry were innocent it was only because someone else had beaten him to the diamond.

“Harrumph!” he growled and moved after the detective.

Larry looked up and saw Gloria watching him. She dropped her eyes quickly but not before he noticed the radiant light of relief that seemed to illuminate her face.

The detective was searching Dereck and Larry turned to watch the procedure. Dereck was smiling pleasantly.

“Look carefully,” he said. “I shouldn’t want you to overlook anything.”

“I won’t,” the detective said, and there was suddenly a grimmer note in his voice. He knelt quickly and fumbled at Dereck’s trouser cuff for an instant and then stood up. The smile was gone from his face.

In his hand he held Gloria’s pendant necklace.

“You weren’t so smart, after all,” he snapped.

There was an incredulous gasp from the assembled guests.

“There’s some mistake!” the colonel roared.

Dereck’s face was as pale as ivory.

“I agree with you, Colonel,” he said smoothly. “There has been a mistake made and our clever detective has made it. He should have drawn his gun.”

A short, ugly revolver appeared magically in his own hand. He snatched the necklace from the detective’s hand, backed away a pace, swinging the gun about to cover the entire room.

“You stupid fools,” he said mockingly, “you fell for my charming line without hesitation, didn’t you?” His eyes were cool and dangerous as he backed toward the archway leading to the hall. “I shouldn’t advise any of you to attempt to follow me. It won’t be healthy.” He smiled ironically. “And you can spare yourself the effort of phoning the police. I took the precaution of cutting the wires before I turned the lights out.”

Larry listened in dazed disbelief. Dereck had stolen the diamond in the first place, not Buggy. Then he had planted it on him, when the search started, probably intending to recover it somehow. But Tim had deposited the pendant in Dereck’s trouser cuff, thus reversing the situation again.

And now Dereck was about to make his getaway. Larry tensed himself and moved forward instinctively, but Dereck’s gun swung around to cover him.

“Don’t try to be a hero,” Dereck said coldly. “Frankly I would enjoy shooting you.”

Larry stopped in his tracks and Dereck backed toward the hallway.

“Au revoir, my stupid friends,” he smiled.

A figure stepped out from the hall behind Dereck and rubbed his knuckles carefully. This figure was dressed like a rainbow and there was an expression of scientific detachment on his wrinkled face as he measured the distance to a spot just back of Dereck’s ear.

His arm came down in a swift chopping stroke and on the end of that arm there was a clenched fist, as hard as rock and twice as effective.

Dereck’s eyes spun crazily at the moment of impact. The gun slipped from his fingers and he toppled slowly to the floor.

“Neat, eh?” Buggy Rafferty smiled at the guests.

Larry stepped forward quickly and his hand closed over the diamond pendant a split second before Buggy’s. Buggy drew back and straightened up sheepishly.

“Too late again,” he said mournfully.

“You aren’t a crook at heart, I’m afraid,” Larry grinned.

“That hurts,” Buggy said, sighing heavily. “I guess I’ll go now. I was just making my exit when they found the diamond on this lug. I couldn’t let him get away with it.”

“Why not?” Larry asked.

Buggy shrugged. “I don’t know. Professional jealousy, I guess.”

Larry turned and handed the necklace to the detective from the insurance Company and then he looked for Gloria, but she was nowhere in sight.

Excusing himself, he hurried through the library and into the sun-room. On the veranda that bordered this room he found her. She was leaning against one of the wooden columns, regarding the moon with a rather belligerent expression on her small face.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello yourself.”

“They found the diamond.”

“I know. Go away.”

Larry moved around in front of her and put his hands on her bare shoulders. They were cold to his touch.

“Let me get you a wrap,” he said. “You’ll catch cold out here.”

“Never mind. I’m going up to my room now. Good night.”

“Please don’t go,” Larry said desperately. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

“I am not interested,” Gloria said in a small voice. Her lower lip was trembling. “Take your hands off me. I’m going.”

Larry sighed. “All right,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. “Go ahead.”

A metallic snap broke the quietness. Gloria looked up at him suddenly, a startled, half-frightened expression on her face. She had been leaning against a veranda post and now she straightened up, a funny, scared look in her eyes.

“Larry,” she said, “I—”

“You were going to your room,” Larry reminded her coldly. “Please do not let me keep you.”

She leaned back, her arms behind her, around the post.

“What were you going to tell me?” she asked.

“I forget. Are you going or aren’t you?”

“I can’t,” she said in a muffled voice. “You can’t? You’re being silly.

What’s keeping you?”

“These.” She turned slightly and Larry’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw that her slender wrists were securely handcuffed behind the post.

And sitting on the veranda railing, legs crossed, was Tim.

“Did you do this?” Larry demanded. Tim nodded. “I had to do something to keep her from leaving. Do your stuff.”

The angry glint in Larry’s eyes faded slowly. There was good sense in what Tim said.

“Scat, chum,” he said. “I can take over from here.”

Tim moved away. “I found Pat and Mike, by the way.”

“Where?”

“In the garden.” Tim shook his head sadly. “A woodpecker got ’em.”

“Excellent,” Larry said contentedly. He took the girl in his arms.

“This is a terrible advantage to take,” he smiled, “but there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

He kissed her soundly and was not too surprised that she kissed him back. She closed her eyes and sighed.

“It’s too bad all prisoners aren’t treated as nicely,” she murmured.

“We’ll have those cuffs off in a jiffy,” Larry said, “I want to trade them for a smaller size that comes in the single model for the third finger, left hand.”

“Darling!” Gloria cried.

She was silent a moment for the excellent reason that her lips were engaged in another pastime. Finally she said, “Darling, who were you talking to a moment ago?”

Larry grinned at her. “One of my puppets.”

She laughed merrily.

“You say the funniest things, darling.”

Enchanted Bookshelf

First published in Fantastic Adventures, March 1943.

Chapter I

Phillip Poincare was a small undistinguished man with pale sensitive features and hair that was graying slightly at the temples.

However, on this particular morning, as he hurried along Michigan Boulevard, there was an unusual flush of excitement on his face and his small neatly gloved hands were clenching and unclenching nervously.

“Mon Dieu, if I am too late!” he murmured to himself for the dozenth time.

At this thought his hurrying steps quickened perceptibly. Panting slightly from his exertions he turned off the Boulevard and continued rapidly down a narrow, twisting side-street that was lined with taverns and small shops.

He did not stop until he reached a used furniture shop, the windows of which were so grime-crusted that it was practically impossible to see the various goods on display.

With nervous apprehension Phillip Poincare peered through the grimy glass and, as his gaze focused, the worried expression on his face faded away and was replaced by a relieved smile.

“Ah!” he murmured softly. “My beauty is still waiting for me.”

The object of his attention was a small, dusty book repository of the period Louis Quatorze. There were innumerable pigeon-holes and drawers in the little cabinet and a flat wide extension for writing. It was supported by four fragile legs, hardly thicker than pencils.

Phillip Poincare let out his breath in one final rapturous sigh and entered the shop.

The proprietor, a fat genial man in a dirty leather apron put aside his morning newspaper and heaved himself to his feet.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling. “I wondered when you was going to break down and come in. I’ve noticed you looking in every morning now for the past month.”

“It has been thirty-four days,” Phillip Poincare said gravely. “The bookcase in the window I desire very much to buy. What is your price?”

The proprietor glanced speculatively at his customer’s neat but inexpensive suit and noticed his slightly frayed gloves. He frowned and began to scratch his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, it’s a mighty nice piece of furniture,” he said. People lately seem to be interested in that kind of stuff.”

An expression of worry flitted across Phillip Poincare’s features.

“But you have not sold it, yes?”

“No, it’s still for sale,” the proprietor said. “For one hundred bucks.”

“One hundred dollars,” Phillip Poincare repeated softly. He looked helplessly at the bookcase and he blinked his eyes nervously. “I see, sir. Thank you very much. I will return when I have a hundred dollars. I did not expect it to be quite that much.”

He walked slowly toward the door.

“Now just a minute,” the proprietor said. “I might throw off a little on that price. How much was you figuring on paying?”

“I have only sixty-four dollars. It has taken me thirty-four days to save that much. You see, I began saving the day I noticed the bookcase in your window.”

“Sixty-four dollars, eh?” the proprietor said musingly. “Are you sure that’s all you’ve got?”

Phillip Poincare smiled wanly. “I am quite sure,” he said.

The proprietor shrugged.

“I’ll never make a dime this way, but it’s a deal. Take it for sixty-four dollars.”

The proprietor was being ambiguously truthful. He would not make a dime. He would make approximately five hundred dimes.

But Phillip Poincare turned from the door, his face shining.

“That is extremely good of you,” he said. He drew a thin well-worn wallet from his inner coat pocket and carefully removed the entire contents, exactly sixty-four dollars.

The proprietor of the shop took the money eagerly.

“Where do you want it delivered?” he asked.

Phillip Poincare gave him the address of a rooming house on the Near North Side.

“I have informed my landlady to expect an article of furniture,” he said. “She will let your men into my room.”

“Fine. We’ll have it over before noon.”

“Thank you,” Phillip Poincare said. “Now I must be going.”

The proprietor walked with him to the door.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” he said, “but why are you so interested in that particular piece of furniture?” Phillip Poincare shrugged his slight square shoulders and a faint smile curved his lips.

“It is hard to explain, even to myself,” he murmured. “Perhaps because at one time it was a part of France.”

“Are you a Frenchie?”

Phillip Poincare nodded. His sensitive features were clouded.

“Like that bookcase I too was once a part of France. But it has the happier memories. If it can dream it dreams of the Musketeers and King Louis and the days of France’s glory. My dreams are bitter reminders of Laval and Darlan and their minions. But—” He stopped suddenly and passed his hand over his brow, shaking his head from side to side. “Forgive me,” he said quietly. “I am not often a bother such as this. Good day.” When Phillip Poincare left the furniture shop he glanced at his watch. It was almost 8:45. He was due at his desk in fifteen minutes and he had a long walk ahead of him. He set off, walking swiftly toward Michigan Boulevard.

Phillip Poincare was at his desk in the large offices of the Bartlett Brokerage Company by 8:56. It took him only a moment to change his coat for the neat gray smock, which was practically the uniform of Bartlett employees, and when the nine o’clock buzzer sounded, he was busily at work, totalling figures and checking accounts as he had done every day for the past twelve years.

Phillip Poincare had come to America in 1930, because economic conditions in France had become so bad that making a living was practically an impossibility. He had applied for his citizenship papers, because he thought it only fair that he should pay his taxes and give his allegiance to the country whose arms had welcomed him when he was in desperate need. But a part of his affections had ever remained with his own beautiful France, which he had known and loved so well. Because of this sentimental attachment he had collected in his small room books and paintings and articles of furniture that expressed the quiet charm of his native land. It was something of a hobby with him, his only avocation, for he was a shy retiring man, and he had never learned the knack of making friends quickly and easily.

As sometimes happens to men who are unable to mix smoothly and normally with their fellow man, Phillip Poincare found another existence, another life in books of fiction, and in these romantic chronicles of swashbuckling heroes of other times, he enjoyed a thrilling escape from reality. Sometimes, when he was lost in the adventures of some romantic hero, he found it difficult to be sure which was his real existence, so completely did he live and share the vicissitudes of the character he happened to be following.

The day passed quickly, because part of his thoughts were busy with the bookshelf and desk he had acquired that morning. When he had spent a few evenings cleaning and polishing its fine old wood there would be a wonderful difference in its appearance. Although the sixty-four dollars it had cost him had been saved from his lunch money and by scrimping on everything else, he didn’t in the least regret the expenditure.

When he had completed his work the five o’clock buzzer sounded. He cleared up a few last details, dusted off the top of his desk and was about to slip into his suit coat when the office manager, an unsmiling, sharp-tongued man named Harker, came up behind him.

“I hope you’re not in a hurry, Poincare,” he said. “I’ve got a little job I’d like you to finish before you leave.”

Phillip turned slowly, trying to keep the disappointment out of his face. The other clerks were already jamming their way through the door, laughing and talking animatedly. Harker never asked any of them to put in extra time. It was always he who was assigned such chores.

“I didn’t have anything in particular to do, Mr. Harker,” he said. “What is it you want?”

“You don’t sound very happy about staying,” Harker said. He was a big man with a round red face and straight black hair. For some reason he took a peculiar pleasure in tormenting and humiliating his subordinate, Phillip Poincare.

“I do not mind staying,” Phillip said quietly. There were times when he longed for the courage to tell Harker precisely what he thought of him, but he was desperately afraid of what might happen if he lost his job. He had known hunger and the gnawing fear of insecurity the better part of his life, and those privations had left a mark on his soul. Any dim spark of revolt that might have kindled in his breast, had long since been stamped out.

“I don’t see why you should mind staying,” Harker said sarcastically. “You don’t do anything with your spare time but read those wild books of fiction all the time. What do you get out of that anyway? Take that yarn about the three musketeers that De Maupassant wrote, for instance. What sane man would waste his time reading such an impossible collection of bilge?”

“De Maupassant did not write the Three Musketeers,” Phillip said mildly. “Dumas, the Elder, wrote it. And it is generally conceded to be a classic.”

Harker’s ironic smile faded. His cheeks flushed with anger. Although he didn’t realize it his dislike of Phillip Poincare resulted from the fact that the man’s air of quiet culture and dignity made him feel inferior.

“Dumas or De Maupassant,” he snapped. “What difference does it make? It’s still a lot of bilge. Frenchmen just don’t have that kind of guts. Look at ’em today! Bowing and scraping like beggars before the Nazis. If they had any guts would they have quit fighting when the going got tough?”

“The French people fought until their ammunition was exhausted,” Phillip said. He was conscious of a hot flame of anger running through his veins. “Only then did they lay down their arms. And they are fighting now with the underground movement, hindering the Nazi machine in every way they can.”

“Bah!” Harker said scornfully. “They’re glad to have someone shout orders at ’em. That’s the kind of people they are.”

“The French People,” Phillip said, his voice trembling, “have had the misfortune to be duped by their unscrupulous leaders. But they hate Nazism as bitterly as we do here in America. And when the time is ripe they will prove that to the satisfaction of the world.”

“The time is now,” Harker said loudly. “What are they waiting for? If they hate the Nazis, why don’t they revolt?”

“It is not easy when a bayonet is at one’s throat,” Phillip said simply.

“That proves my point!” Harker said triumphantly. “They’re just gutless and afraid, that’s all. And the frogs always have been. That’s why those adventure books you read are such a waste of time. The only place you’ll ever find a brave Frenchman is right where you look for them — in a book of fiction.”

“But—”

“I haven’t any more time to waste,” Harker said rudely. “If you’re smart you’ll think about what I said. You’ve got the wrong slant on a lot of things, Poincare. Now get busy. You’ll find the work I’ve laid out for you on my desk. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so.”

He turned on his heel and strode away. The arrogant swing of his walk and the cocky angle of his beefy shoulders indicated more clearly than could any words his complete satisfaction with his handling of the discussion.

Phillip waited until he had left the office, then he slumped into his chair, staring unseeingly ahead of him. While he hated Harker, he realized with sickening clarity that at the moment he hated himself still more.

Finally he roused himself from his black reverie and began walking. Although he worked steadily and swiftly, it was two hours later before he left the office and started homeward.

Chapter II

When Phillip Poincare had finished his frugal evening meal, he caught a street car and rode northward to his boarding house.

His landlady met him in the hall.

“There were some furniture men here today,” she announced. “I let them into your room. They delivered another one of them antiques you’re so interested in.”

“Thank you,” Phillip said.

With anticipation quickening his steps he ascended the carpeted stairs to his room. The annoying worries of the day slipped from his shoulders and a cheery whistle was on his lips as he entered his room and snapped on the lights.

The first object that met his eyes was the bookshelf that he had acquired that morning. The delivery men had left it in the middle of the floor.

Phillip surveyed it lovingly. Somehow it seemed even more beautiful and perfect here in his room than it had in the furniture store. His room was furnished with graceful, early French furniture and the walls were lined with books and softly tinted tapestries. Against this background his newly acquired bookshelf seemed perfectly in place.

He got a cloth from the closet and set about polishing its fine, close grained surface. On his knees he dusted the under sides of the book shelf and burnished its slender, curving legs.

The job took him almost an hour, but when he was finished the bookshelf’s surface gleamed with a new, beautiful luster.

Phillip studied the results of his labors with satisfaction. As a final measure he pulled out the tiny drawers, dusted their insides and shoved them back into place. With the cloth wrapped about his index finger he probed into the tiny pigeonholes, scraping out the dust and the tiny filaments of spider webs.

Just as he was about to climb to his feet his hand ran against a sharp splinter on the underside of the lowest shelf. With a worried frown he bent low to examine it. He saw that the thin wood had warped slightly and cracked. A slim jagged splinter protruded from the otherwise smooth surface.

Carefully Phillip peeled off the thin splinter. A touch of varnish should completely hide the faint scar, he thought. He lit a match and bent down again to examine the damage.

The patch where the splinter had been removed gleamed whitely against the dark mahogany of the shelf. And on this white scar Phillip saw faint scratches that looked like writing.

Excited, he bent closer and struck another match. In the bright illumination he saw clearly that the scratches spelled a name. And when he read that name, he felt his heart beginning to beat faster.

For the signature scratched in small crude strokes on the underside of the shelf was that of Alexander Dumas. The “Alexander” wasn’t spelled out of course, but who else could A. Dumas be, but France’s immortal writer of romances?

Phillip sat back on his heels and the match in his hand burned down to his fingers. Absent-mindedly he dropped the match to the carpet, for his thoughts were hundreds of years away.

Supposing this was the bookshelf and desk of Alexander Dumas? The thought sent tingling shivers through his body.

With trembling fingers he began a systematic exploration of the desk. If it had been the property of Alexander Dumas there might be other identifying marks which he had overlooked. But although he did not miss an inch of the desk’s surface he found nothing else to indicate that it had once been owned by the creator of the Three Musketeers.

He returned again to the crudely scratched signature. For a few seconds he studied it carefully, then he ran his fingers over the faint scratches. When he did this he felt the wood give slightly beneath the tips of his fingers.

He tipped the desk on its side, a strange excitement flooding through his veins. Again his fingers moved over the signature, but this time he pressed gently but firmly against the wood. A section of the underside of the shelf gave way and Phillip heard a faint creaking sound from the side of the desk.

Moving quickly around to the side of the desk he saw that a small drawer had slid out from the apparently solid side of the desk. So cleverly was this secret compartment fitted into the desk that Phillip’s minute examination had failed to reveal its presence.

Experimentally he slowly closed the drawer. Then he again pressed the section of the shelf on which the name of A. Dumas was scratched; and again the secret drawer swung slowly open.

Phillip dug his hand into the drawer, felt crackling paper under his fingers. Hurriedly he removed the object his fingers had touched, a long flat bundle of papers, covered with a close fine scroll.

He flipped through the pages, and as occasional phrases caught his eye, his heart began to hammer with suppressed excitement. This carelessly wrapped bundle of sheets was a French manuscript of Dumas’ immortal romance.

The Three Musketeers.

Phillip knew the novel by heart almost, and he could not be mistaken. This might even be the original manuscript, in Dumas’ own handwriting!

Hardly able to believe his good fortune, Phillip raptly turned the pages of the manuscript, caught again by the spell of Dumas’ magic. The thrilling character of D’Artagnan and the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, strode again across the pages, somehow more real and alive in this dust-encrusted manuscript than they had ever been in the neat pages of a book.

As Phillip turned the pages of the manuscript dust puffed up from the yellowed, cracked sheets, and swirled about his head in a dense, suffocating fog.

He coughed and waved away the little clouds of dust with his hand. From the open drawer in which he had discovered the manuscript more dust drifted up, until the entire room was hazy with the musty fog.

Phillip blew his nose and wiped the dust from his smarting eyes, but these measures helped but little, for the dust continued to swirl up from the drawer and manuscript like smoke rising from a banked fire.

Alarmed, Phillip laid aside the manuscript and climbed to his feet. But something seemed to be wrong with him. His legs were unsteady and there was a vast roaring sound between his ears. He knew that he needed air. But he was too dizzy to walk to the window.

The room was now so filled with the swirling fog of smoke that he was unable to see a foot in front of him, and he realized that he must get out or he would suffocate.

Stumbling blindly, he turned and staggered toward the door, but before he had moved a yard, his knees gave way and he fell forward to his knees and then to his face.

There was a cloudy film of blackness obscuring his vision and his muscles refused to respond to the instinctive urgings of his brain.

He wondered fleetingly if he were dying. If so, it was not exactly unpleasant. Everything was foggy and hazy, but the floor seemed soft and comfortable and he felt that if he closed his eyes he would drift quietly into a peaceful slumber. As his last conscious thoughts faded he imagined he heard voices behind him and as blackness claimed him, he fancied he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, shaking him urgently.

Chapter III

“Mon dieu. I fear our little liberator will never open his eyes again!”

“A pity. He looks so pale, comrades. A flask of good Burgundy wine would put the glow of good spirits into those cheeks again, I’d wager.”

These voices drifted faintly through the fogs of darkness which shrouded Phillip Poincare and he stirred uneasily.

“Ah!”

“He is moving!”

“Excellent!”

Phillip shook his head side to side and a white light began to gleam through the blackness that enveloped him. The voices seemed far away. As consciousness gradually returned he realized that he was seated in a chair and that a pillow had been propped behind his head. He pressed his hands to his face as memory suddenly returned to him. What had happened?

He had been working on the bookshelf, polishing and cleaning it, when he had discovered the little secret drawer. And in the secret drawer he had found the manuscript, yellow and cracked and aged. Then had come the smothering, suffocating dust...

He shuddered and opened his eyes.

For an instant he stared in growing incredulity at the four, strangely clad men who looked down at him, with friendly concern in their faces, then he closed his eyes tightly and pressed his hands to face.

“Delirium tremens!” he gasped. “And I haven’t taken a drink in years!”

He opened his eyes again, slowly, hesitantly, expecting that the apparitions would have vanished, but they were still there, regarding him with frankly puzzled expressions.

They looked from one to another and shrugged their shoulders significantly as Phillip continued to stare at them in pop-eyed astonishment.

Phillip pinched himself to make sure that he was awake.

“Who are you?” he gasped. “What are you doing in my room?”

As he spoke his gaze swung from figure to figure, automatically drinking in the details of their dress and person. All four were better than average in height and they were all dressed in cloaks, blazing baldrics and gleaming leather boots that came up to the middle of their thighs. Sweeping plumed hats were set rakishly on their dark hair, but the comic-opera effect was not carried out in the long, flashing swords that grazed the floor, or the heavy pistols that were jammed into their gaudy waistbands. These weapons looked grimly business-like and there was something in the eyes and manner of the men regarding him that indicated they would know how to use those weapons with skill and relish.

Phillip swallowed. Although he had an average degree of courage, there was something in the weirdness of this situation that unnerved him.

He clenched his hands nervously.

“Who are you?” he asked again. This time his voice was a bare whisper.

The young man standing directly in front of him removed his sweeping hat with a flourish and bowed. Phillip saw that his hair was curling and brown, almost the same shade as his eyes. The face of this young man was lean and handsome and now it wore an expression of whimsical friendliness. But Phillip had the indefinable feeling that that expression could change; that those jaws could harden; and that those warm brown eyes would glint as coldly as ice if the sword at his side was unsheathed.

“With a thousand pardons,” the young man said, smiling. “We have completely forgotten our manners. With your permission I will introduce ourselves.”

He waved negligently to the largest of his companions, a veritable giant of a man, with heavy powerful shoulders and mighty, steel-thewed hands.

“This ox-like creature,” he murmured, “we call Porthos.”

Turning from Porthos he patted the shoulder of the fair-haired, plump man who stood beside him.

“This noble soul is Aramis,” the young man said. “And last we come to Athos, the pride of the ladies of the court, the fond friend of the perfumers and lace makers, and the coolest blade in France.”

With a slight flourish he bowed to the last of the strange company, a tall, serious faced young man with firm, mobile lips and soft, warmly colored eyes.

Phillip stared dazedly at the four costumed men. His heart was hammering with a deafening sound in his ears. Those names...

Athos! Porthos! Aramis!

What did this mean? Was it all some colossal hoax?

He turned beseechingly to the dashing young man who had made the introductions.

“Who are you? Where did you come from?”

The tall young man with the lean face and smiling eyes, whipped out his gleaming blade and raised it in a salute. He laughed and a ringlet of brown hair fell over his forehead.

“My name is Gascon,” he answered. “Gascon D’Artagnan at your service.

Although the good Cardinal has called me many other uncomplimentary things, men know me simply as D’Artagnan.”

“D’Artagnan!” Phillip breathed the word slowly.

“Yes,” the young man said. He smiled and sheathed his sword. “Now if there is aught we can do to repay you for your great service I insist that you name it. Do you have enemies? Porthos will wring their necks and Athos will run them through for you. Aramis will pray for their souls and I will drink to their everlasting poor health. Come, name your wish, and by the honor of the King’s guard it shall be our command.”

Phillip’s bewildered confusion increased. There was an undeniable ring of sincerity in the young man’s voice and expression, but the entire thing was so preposterous...

“I appreciate your offer,” he said, haltingly, “but I don’t have any enemies.”

“That is unfortunate,” the young man who called himself D’Artagnan said reprovingly. “If you have no enemies, with whom do you fight?”

“I do not fight anyone,” Phillip answered.

D’Artagnan regarded him incredulously.

“A Frenchman who does not fight! It is unbelievable. Tell me, don’t you find life dull? My poor good father gave me nothing but advice, but some of it was beyond measure. Fight, Gascon! Fight always! I can hear his old voice again, repeating these words over and over. And, being of course a dutiful son, I have tried faithfully to follow his instructions.”

Porthos and Athos exchanged amused grins.

“And it is only in respect to your dear dead father that you fight, eh?” Porthos said gravely.

Phillip found the situation growing more and more bewildering. There was something weird and hysterical about the entire scene, as if it were something rehearsed in a madhouse.

“Gentlemen, please!” He stood up, an imploring note in his voice. “I appreciate your offers of help, but I do not need your assistance. I would be obliged if you would tell me who you are and why you are here. I have had a severe shock tonight and I am not in the mood for practical jokes.”

D’Artagnan looked slightly puzzled. “Mon ami,” he said, “I have told you who we are. How we come to be here is a long story, and I think you have a right to hear it. Do you not agree, comrades?” he asked, turning to his three companions.

The huge Porthos nodded.

“But, of course,” said Aramis and Athos in one voice.

D’Artagnan strolled up and down the room for a few moments in silence, his lean features thoughtful and a curious mellow glint of reminiscence in his dark expressive eyes.

“It is a simple story,” he said at last. “My friends and I for many years enjoyed a stimulating conflict with His Eminence, the Cardinal Duke de Richelieu. And you may be sure that the Red Duke was a worthy adversary, clever, resourceful and as captivated by a good hard fight as were we.” D’Artagnan paused and chuckled. “But in spite of our many disagreements, His Eminence could never bring himself to be really angry with us. Sometimes I think he was secretly glad when we routed his precious guardsmen, for it amused him to see their pomposity deflated. However, many of our enemies were not as tolerant as His Eminence. I fear they lacked his sense of humor, for they decided one night to put an end to our fun-loving pranks by the simple expedient of hanging us by our necks until we lost interest in the procedure. His Eminence saved us, for he enjoyed too much our little feud to see us dispatched, but he was forced to resort to drastic measures.

“And so,” D’Artagnan said, spreading his hands expressively, “with the aid of his immense powers he entombed us in the manuscript of the great man whose fertile pen had transmitted our adventures to paper, the Dumas Pere.

“The entombment,” he said wryly, “was supposed to be only a temporary sojourn, but several events beyond even the almost miraculous ken of His Eminence miscarried. Among these was the death of His Eminence. Since then we have waited long for our liberation, and it is to you we owe thanks for that happy event. Now do you understand how and why we are here?”

Phillip swallowed and sank back weakly in his chair. His brain was wheeling in dizzy, spiralling circles. Nothing seemed to make sense, least of all himself. For despite his common sense, he found himself believing the incredible story of this slim assured young man. Why, he couldn’t say.

“Now,” D’Artagnan said briskly, “you must tell us where we are and what year this is. And how far are we from Paris?”

“You are in America,” Phillip said weakly. “A century and a half have passed since the period you speak of.”

“America!” D’Artagnan frowned. “That is inconvenient. But,” he shrugged philosophically, “I suppose it can’t be helped. Anyway, I shall be glad to inspect the colonies of the good King.”

The mighty Porthos shook his head worriedly.

“This I do not like,” he said ponderously. “This is a new, strange world. I wish to return to my France as soon as possible.”

Phillip Poincare looked at these sons and heroes of France and there was a sadness in his eyes. They didn’t know.

“That is not possible now,” he said gently. “France has been at war with Germany for the past three years. It would be impossible for you to return there now.”

“War!” D’Artagnan cried. His strong brown hand closed over the hilt of his sword. “Our France at war and we stand here idle!”

“All the more reason for returning immediately,” Porthos said.

“But you don’t understand,” Phillip said desperately. “France lost the war over two years ago. They are now a subject nation.”

D’Artagnan’s blade leaped from its sheath. Its gleaming point swung to a stop, inches from Phillip’s heart.

“Take care,” D’Artagnan said tensely, “or I will forget the debt I owe you.” Phillip looked at the glinting point of the sword and he saw the grimness in D’Artagnan’s eyes, but he felt no fear. Only a vast pity for these courageous adventurers from another time.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I am only telling the truth. France has been defeated.”

“She will rise!” Athos said. His eyes were no longer warm and his full lips had flattened into a thin hard line.

“‘Who was her enemy?” D’Artagnan demanded.

“The Germans,” Phillip answered. “Ah!” D’Artagnan made a gesture of disgust. “To lose to those beer swilling swine is an insult to injury.” He wheeled about, flinging his cape over his shoulder. “Well, comrades, what shall we do?”

“We return to France,” Athos said simply. “What else could we do?”

Aramis nodded slowly and Porthos grunted in assent.

“There is no way to return to France,” Phillip cried. “The sea lanes are no longer open. The entire world is at war.”

D’Artagnan’s eyes danced with pleased excitement.

“Excellent!” he cried. “My greatest fear has been that I would arise from my entombment in a world of dullness and peace. Comrades, we are in luck. From what our friend tells us we can step out this door and find enemies lurking in every street and alley.”

“You will not find enemies here,” Phillip said, shaking his head. “The people of America are now at war with the Germans. Their sympathies are and have been always with France.”

“This,” said D’Artagnan, “is becoming more complicated each minute.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps you had better explain everything in detail to us.”

Phillip Poincare spent that night and the better part of the next morning attempting to bring the Musketeers up to date and to interpret to them the international situation with all of its various ramifications. Whether he succeeded he couldn’t tell.

Athos and Aramis dropped off to sleep in the middle of the narrative and Porthos was nodding wearily before it was completed. Only D’Artagnan listened eagerly to the entire recital, and when Phillip had finished his account of the modern world, he had but one question to ask.

“Where can we find this man De Gaulle?” D’Artagnan said softly as his hand closed about the hilt of his sword.

Chapter IV

The rays of the morning sun awoke Phillip Poincare on the following day. With a start he sprang to his feet. He was still fully clothed and he realized that he had fallen asleep in his chair. For a dazed instant his mind flickered back over the preceding night and his first thought was that he had suffered a weird nightmare.

But a glance about the room convinced him that the previous night had not been a figment of his imagination. For stretched out on the floor, in various attitudes of slumber, were Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the dashing D’Artagnan, looking like an innocent child with his wavy brown hair falling over one eye and a peaceful smile curving his lips.

Quietly Phillip prepared himself for work. He would have to leave them here during the day, and the thought of what possibly might happen caused a nervous perspiration to break out on his forehead.

But he reckoned without his guests.

He was tiptoeing toward the door, hat in hand, when D’Artagnan stretched and opened one eye.

“Ah!” he cried. “The greetings of the day, my friend.”

With a lithe movement he sprang to his feet, stretched his arms over his head and then drummed his fists against his chest. The three slumbering Musketeers awoke and sat up. Greetings were exchanged and Aramis called down the wrath of the Heavens on D’Artagnan for arousing them at such an unearthly hour.

Phillip fidgeted uncomfortably. His eyes strayed to the clock.

“I must leave you now,” he said hastily-

“But no!” D’Artagnan cried. “We shall accompany you, Comrade. We need you to act as guide and interpreter in our wanderings. Come, you lazy dogs, on your feet. Our comrade waits impatiently.”

“But you can’t come with me,” Phillip protested. “I have to go to work.”

“Very well,” D’Artagnan said. “We shall go with you and help. After all, it is only fair.”

Aramis and Athos climbed eagerly to their feet but Porthos shook his head, frowning.

“Leave me here,” he said. “Things have happened too quickly for my poor tired brain to understand. I must think and I need solitude for that.”

“Also,” D’Artagnan grinned, “you need something with which to think, my ox-like friend. But if you wish to remain behind, so be it.”

“I must,” said Porthos. “I am puzzled.”

“Then let us be off,” D’Artagnan cried.

And in spite of Phillip’s feeble protests, the musketeers hurried him out the door, down the steps and into the street. His explanations of the night before had prepared them for the sights that met their eyes, but still they were highly amazed by the cars shooting by and the paved streets and brick houses.

D’Artagnan stretched his arms in the sunshine.

“But it is glorious,” he cried. He breathed deeply. “At least the sun and the wind and the birds and trees have not changed. They are familiar old friends.”

“Come,” Phillip said nervously. “We must hurry.”

“Lead on!” D’Artagnan cried. “Through hell’s fire we follow.”

Phillip led them down the street to the street car line where he caught the car to work. With nervous apprehension he noticed the curious glances of pedestrians as they saw the cloaked and booted figures of the Musketeers.

A fat, well-dressed man who was also waiting for a car studied the three musketeers for an incredulous moment and then broke into a roar of laughter.

He turned and nudged his companion.

“Look,” he chortled, pointing a fat finger at the objects of his mirth. “I wonder what election bet they lost.”

D’Artagnan’s lean face flushed angrily. His hand flashed to the hilt of his sword, but Phillip stayed his arm.

“He meant no harm,” he whispered.

The color faded from D’Artagnan’s face and his fingers slowly loosened their grip on his sword hilt. But his eyes were still as cold and hard as dagger points.

“It would give me great satisfaction to spit him like a roasting hen,” he said softly.

Fortunately at that moment the street car arrived. Phillip climbed aboard and the Musketeers followed his action, greatly excited with their new adventure. Phillip paid the fares and led his charges into the body of the car.

The fat man who had been waiting managed to squeeze ahead of Phillip and settle himself in the last available seat with a smug pleased expression on his round, pompous face. Not only had he outmaneuvered Phillip, but he had reached the seat an instant ahead of a slim, red-haired young girl who had gotten on at the opposite end of the car. The girl was almost knocked off her feet by his bull-like dash to the seat and she grabbed a strap just in time to save herself from falling.

The street car started with a lurch.

Phillip, with dexterity born of long experience, clutched at a strap in the nick of time, but D’Artagnan and his two companions almost fell to the floor as they lost their balance.

“Mon Dieu!” D’Artagnan cried, as he staggered back, “this is worse than that wild steed of mine.”

Heads turned from one end of the car to the other and amazed glances were fixed on the three picturesquely clad musketeers, with the swinging swords and flopping hats. A running fire of whispered comment spread from person to person. Phillip felt acutely nervous for a while, but his worry abated slightly as he realized that most of the passengers regarded his companions as masquerading college youths. He breathed a sigh of relief.

D’Artagnan tapped him on the shoulder.

“Yes?” Phillip whispered.

D’Artagnan nodded toward the red-haired girl who was hanging uncomfortably by one hand to the strap. As the car lurched and swayed she had difficulty keeping her balance. Phillip drew a nervous breath as he noticed the angry spots of color in D’Artagnan’s lean face.

“Why is the girl left to stand?” D’Artagnan asked coldly. “What kind of gentlemen do you breed in this land? His eyes raked contemptuously over the men, seated comfortably, reading their morning newspapers.

“Quietly,” Phillip whispered. “This is no concern of yours. Please, do not cause a scene here.”

The florid faced fat man and others had heard D’Artagnan’s remarks. They were looking at him with hostile glances and Phillip could hear mutterings from some of the men.

“What’s it to you, buddy?” the fat man snapped. He settled himself more comfortably in his seat and glared angrily at the three Musketeers.

D’Artagnan looked down at the man and a slow humorless smile curved his lips.

“My fat friend,” he said gently, “your manners are exceeded in repulsiveness by your appearance, but only to a slight degree. While your legs are still able to carry your chubby body, I would advise you to leave. You have ceased to amuse me.”

Phillip gripped D’Artagnan’s arm. “Please,” he whispered frantically. “You are only going to cause trouble for yourself.”

The red-haired girl turned to D’Artagnan and her cool green eyes widened in amazement. She was tall and slender, with fine square shoulders tapering to a slim graceful waist. Her light, arched eyebrows were drawn together in a worried frown.

She laid a gloved hand on D’Artagnan’s forearm.

“Don’t trouble yourself on my account,” she said softly. “I am accustomed to standing.”

“Trouble?” D’Artagnan said with mock incredulity. “I assure you, gracious lady, I consider service in your behalf the highest privilege.”

Aramis moved forward, smiling ingratiatingly. His eyes moved over the girl’s lovely face and form in a slow admiring appraisal.

“My companion,” he said smoothly, “is guilty only of an unpardonable understatement. Service for you would be Earth’s highest reward.” He waved his arm down the length of the crowded car. “Choose the location your heart desires and I, Aramis, assure you it will be yours within a very few seconds.”

“College punks!” the fat man said loudly to the man next to him. “That’s all they are.”

D’Artagnan raised one eyebrow and studied the man thoughtfully.

“It was my impression,” he said quietly, “that I told you to leave some time ago. What is the delay, my obese friend?”

“You ain’t bluffing me. I know my rights.”

D’Artagnan sighed and slowly drew his sword.

“Will you run him through?” asked Aramis, with polite interest.

“I dislike doing it in public,” D’Artagnan said regretfully.

“I see your point,” Athos said, entering the conversation for the first time. “He needs to be killed of course, but it should be done in a quiet secluded vale where he would not be able to boast of his death.”

With a flick of his wrist D’Artagnan twirled his sword in the air and its gleaming point was suddenly grazing the fat man’s gullet.

“Now, my fat one, are you still anxious to stay?” he asked.

The fat man dropped his paper and strained against the back of the seat, his breath suddenly rattling in his throat. His distended eyes stared downward in horror at the point of the sword.

“Watch what you’re doing,” he cried shrilly. “That thing is touching me. You’re liable to hurt somebody!”

“Somebody?” mused D’Artagnan. “No, my corpulent one, it will be you who are hurt.”

The fat man stared in horror at the calm icy depths of D’Artagnan’s eyes and suddenly he began to tremble like a bowl of quivering jelly.

“I was only kidding, Mister,” he croaked. “The lady can have the seat, honest she can. Just take that sticker out of my adam’s apple.”

D’Artagnan smiled gracefully.

“I knew you would do the gentlemanly thing, my friend. You only needed a slight — er — prodding in the right direction. But you must remember to be more prompt in the future.”

The point of the sword withdrew from the man’s neck. With a grin D’Artagnan flicked his wrist and the flashing blade slashed through the man’s bright silk tie, cutting it completely in two.

“Hey!” the man cried. “That was a new tie.”

“Consider yourself fortunate,” Athos said. “A tie can be replaced but a jugular vein presents a more difficult problem.”

D’Artagnan sheathed his sword. The fat man scrambled from the seat and ducked down the aisle, perspiration streaming down his neck.

D’Artagnan bowed to the young girl with a flourish.

“Our friend had a pressing appointment and was forced to leave,” he smiled. “I am sure he would be happy if you would take the seat he has vacated.”

“Thank you,” the girl said uncertainly. “But you might have gotten yourself into trouble on my account and it wouldn’t have been worth it.” She sat down and looked up at D’Artagnan’s tall figure with a peculiar expression in her eyes.

“The days when a man’s sword defended a woman are gone,” she murmured. “But sometimes—”

She dropped her eyes and D’Artagnan saw that her small shoulders were shaking softly.

“What is it?” he asked gently. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, nothing,” the girl said in a small muffled voice. She raised her eyes and he saw that their cool green depths were misted with tears. “Thank you. I am grateful. Please leave me now.”

Phillip took D’Artagnan by the arm. “Come,” he said. “This is our stop. We must get off here.”

“But—” D’Artagnan looked down at the girl with the troubled eyes. “We can’t leave just now. I—”

“Come,” Phillip said urgently. Unwillingly D’Artagnan followed Phillip down the aisle of the car, but he stopped at the door for one last look at the girl’s small figure. Then with a sigh he stepped off the car. When it rattled past them and disappeared around a bend in the street, he shrugged his shoulders.

“I shouldn’t have left her,” he said gravely. “She was in trouble.”

“She was also very beautiful,” Aramis said. “That would be sufficient reason for staying.”

“We must hurry,” Phillip said, with an anxious glance at his watch. “I can’t afford to be late.”

With the Musketeers at his heels he crossed the street toward the huge stone building that housed the offices of the Bartlett Brokerage Company.

Chapter V

When Phillip reached the glass doors that led to the main offices of the Bartlett Brokerage Company, he paused. For the first time he began to wonder if what he was doing was wise.

He swallowed nervously and glanced at the three musketeers. Their faces were beaming expectantly. Phillip thought of Mr. Harker and his probable reaction to an invasion of the office by three cloaked, be-plumed, swaggering young men and he winced. The thought of Mr. Harker’s reaction was not pleasant.

He mopped his damp brow.

“What is it?” D’Artagnan asked. You seem worried and nervous. Let us proceed.”

“Of course,” Phillip said feebly. “It’s just that your presence here might not be understood.”

“Then you will explain our presence,” D’Artagnan said, slapping him on the back. “That is all there is to it.”

“Follow me,” Phillip said resignedly. He led the three musketeers into the office and to his own desk. He noticed with apprehension that the entrance of his companions did not go unnoticed. His fellow clerks dropped their pencils practically in unison and then their jaws dropped open as if they were synchronized.

D’Artagnan glanced about the large, desk-filled room.

“What kind of work is done here?” he asked. He was obviously not impressed with the surroundings.

“We add figures,” Phillip explained apologetically.

“All day?” D’Artagnan demanded. “Do you mean that grown men spend their days in this airless coop doing nothing but adding figures. It is incredible.”

Phillip Poincare had always known subconsciously that his work was dull and unimportant, but somehow hearing it from D’Artagnan’s lips brought it home with vivid force.

But he didn’t have time to think of that any longer for, from the corner of his eye, he saw the portly, red-faced form of Mr. Harker steaming across the floor toward his desk.

“This is my superior,” he explained nervously to the musketeers. “We — we mustn’t do anything to anger him.”

“Reminds me of an innkeeper I knew in Gascony,” Athos observed thoughtfully. “I remember very well the day they hung him. Horse thieving, I think.”

Mr. Harker came to an impressive stop before Phillip’s desk.

“Good morning, Mr. Harker,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry I was late.”

Mr. Harker ignored the apology. His outraged gaze raked over the nonchalant musketeers and swung hotly back to Phillip.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. His voice was cold and angry. “This is a business office, not a minstrel show. Who are these men?”

“—er — friends of mine,” Phillip answered. “I–I just wanted to show them the office. They’re from — out-of town.”

“They look like they’re from an asylum,” Harker said witheringly. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his abdomen protruded belligerently. “Get them out of here at once,” he snapped. “I’ll talk to you about this later.”

Athos tapped Mr. Harker on the shoulder.

“Have you ever been in Gascony?” he asked.

“What? No, of course not.”

“Uncommon resemblance,” Athos muttered. He shook his head thoughtfully.

“Resemblance to whom?” Harker demanded. He seemed slightly confused by the sudden twist in the conversation.

“You have an amazing likeness to a horse thief I saw hung there recently,” Athos said. He peered closely, suspiciously at Harker. “Are you sure you’ve never been in Gascony?” he persisted.

Harker’s face reddened in rage. The veins at his temples throbbed visibly.

“A wise guy, eh?” he shouted.

Aramis had quietly drawn his sword while Athos was talking to Harker. There was a puckish, mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he gently laid the flat of the blade against Harker’s protruding stomach. Harker was so convulsed with apoplectic rage that he was unaware of the sword’s pressure against his vest.

“You’ll suffer for this, Poincare,” he shouted. “It might cost you your job. This is no laughing matter.”

As he finished speaking Aramis flicked his sword downward and two buttons from Harker’s vest dropped to the floor.

His vest spread open and a tuft of white shirt emerged.

Harker glared angrily at his exposed shirt and then hastily shoved it back into place.

“You — you young whippersnapper!” he cried. “I’ll have the law on you for this.”

D’Artagnan chuckled and leaned back against Phillip’s desk, while Athos slapped a hand against his thigh and smilingly regarded Harker’s outburst.

“It is only a prank,” D’Artagnan said grinning.

“You aren’t going to beg off that easily,” Harker fumed. “I’ll have the whole lot of you locked up.” He glared contemptuously at their costumes and a sarcastic smile touched his full lips. “It’s about the sort of thing one would expect from wearers of those uniforms. The Frenchmen were too busy with schoolboy pranks to fight the Nazis. They’re fine for wearing uniforms and swords but they leave the fighting to men. Well, I think I’ll make an example of you. This prank won’t seem so funny when you’re behind bars.”

Aramis smiled at D’Artagnan and Athos.

“Methinks I see the shadow of the Bastille in the distance,” he murmured.

D’Artagnan’s face was white with anger.

“Methinks I hear the braying of an ass,” he said, looking at Harker.

Harker wheeled on Phillip.

“If you want your job Poincare you’d better have a plausible explanation ready for this when I talk to you tonight. I’ve been altogether too decent with you. I can see now that I am going to have to take disciplinary measures.”

Phillip had done a little thinking since Harker had started railing at the musketeers. He had thought of himself and his job and the mental humiliation he endured in keeping it. And he felt suddenly sick of himself.

“I have no explanation, Mr. Harker,” he said. “Not for you at least. These men are my friends, and that is sufficient explanation for their actions as far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Poincare,” Harker said warningly.

Phillip studied Harker for a moment and he seemed to see him for the first time as he was — a fat, bullying coward with his heel on the neck of those who couldn’t fight back. Phillip smiled. For some reason he felt a wonderful sense of release and elation. He realized, with a touch of wonder, that slavery was not only a thing of chains and fetters and that freedom meant more than mere physical freedom. Mental and spiritual freedom were the important things to any man who was worthy of that title.

His smiling silence brought a flush of blood to Harker’s cheeks.

“Wipe that smile off your face,” he snarled. He advanced threateningly toward Phillip; his meaty fists clenched.

Phillip’s first reaction was to retreat. He took a step backward, not through fear but rather uncertainty. At that instant his eyes met D’Artagnan’s and he saw the musketeer was regarding him sadly, pityingly.

Phillip stopped and squared his shoulders. He knew what he had to do and he realized he should have done it years ago.

Harker took another step forward and Phillip doubled up his fist and drove it squarely into his soft, protruding midriff.

Harker gasped. His face turned a sickly white, then a dull, spotted green. He staggered back and doubled up, his hands clutching at his stomach.

D’Artagnan slapped Phillip on the back. “Well done,” he said.

Harker collapsed into a chair and his flabby face was damp with perspiration. “You’re through, Poincare,” he said in a strangling voice. “You’re fired. Do you hear? Get out!”

“You’re a little late,” Phillip said. “I quit ten seconds ago!”

Outside in the street a few minutes later, Phillip found his new-found confidence waning. After all, a man had to do something to keep body and soul together.

“Well, what now?” D’Artagnan asked.

“That’s just what I was wondering.” Phillip answered, frowning. He glanced at the musketeer’s picturesque uniforms. “The first thing we have to do is to get you some less conspicuous clothes. Then we’ll go back to the apartment and talk this thing over.”

Chapter VI

When they reached Phillip’s apartment a few hours later, the musketeers carried bulky packages containing their uniforms under their arms and they were attired in the more conventional, but less picturesque attire of the twentieth century.

D’Artagnan had chosen a soft tweed and it fitted his lean supple figure with careless ease. Except for his long, curling brown hair he could have passed for a successful advertising executive. Athos wore a classic pin stripe in black, but Aramis, for some reason, had selected a gaudy plaid that fitted his round body without a wrinkle.

Phillip opened the door and stepped into his room. The first thing he noticed was that the radio was on full blast, but the second fact that struck him almost took his breath away.

The room was empty.

Porthos was gone!

“Well,” he said, weakly.

D’Artagnan glanced about the room worriedly. He looked into the closets and bathroom but there was no sign of the huge musketeer whom they had left a few hours before.

“Where could he have gone?” D’Artagnan asked.

“Just a minute,” Phillip said. He picked up the phone and dialed Central station. When the desk sergeant’s voice came over the wire, Phillip cleared his throat nervously.

“I want to report a missing person,” he explained. “He’s a — er — stranger in the city and I’m afraid he might be lost. He’s a big fellow and he’s wearing a rather strange costume.”

“Go on!” the sergeant’s voice was suddenly interested. “What kind of a costume?”

“An early French outfit,” Phillip said. “Cloak and sword, high boots and baldric. You won’t be able to miss him.”

“I say we won’t,” the sergeant’s voice sounded grim. “He’s behind bars this minute, where he belongs.”

“What!” gasped Phillip. “What’s the charge?”

“Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, intoxication, resisting arrest — shall I go on?”

“No,” Phillip said weakly. “I get the general idea.”

“If you say you know him,” the sergeant said, “You’d better get down here right away.”

“I’ll be right down,” Phillip said. He hung up the phone slowly. He was stunned.

“What is the trouble?” demanded D’Artagnan.

“Porthos has managed to get himself in trouble with the police,” Phillip explained worriedly.

“Ah! The gendarmes!” Athos cried. “Comrades, we will need our swords for this task. We must rescue Porthos.”

“No,” Phillip said. “Swords won’t help. I’ll get him out. You wait here. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“I had better come, too,” D’Artagnan said. “Maybe I can be of help.”

“All right,” Phillip said. “Come along.” He turned to Athos and Aramis. “Don’t leave here until we return.”

With D’Artagnan at his heels he hurried down the steps.

At the Central Police station they found the desk-sergeant grim-faced and unpleasant.

“So you’re the friends of that big nut, are you?” the sergeant snapped, glaring from D’Artagnan to Phillip. “He put six of our men on the sick list for the next two weeks when they tried to bring him in. It took two riot squads to calm him down. What the hell is the matter with him anyway?”

Phillip mopped his brow and glanced fleetingly at D’Artagnan.

“I’m not quite sure, sergeant,” he said. “Can we see him and talk to him for a moment?”

“O.K. He’s quieted down now.”

“Where did you pick him up?” Phillip asked.

“At the main studio of the Federated Broadcasting Company.”

“Federated Broad—” Phillips’ voice trailed off weakly. “What was he doing there?”

“Trying to tear the place down,” the sergeant answered, laconically. “I tell you he’s nuttier than a fruit cake.”

Phillip swallowed and glanced nervously at D’Artagnan. What had gotten into the huge Porthos he couldn’t even imagine, but there didn’t seem to be any point to asking more questions of the sergeant.

A turnkey led them to the lockup. Porthos was standing at the door of a cell, his huge hands gripping the bars and there was a bewildered, confused expression on his broad, homely face. One of his eyes was a gorgeous purple and his lower lip was split. His baldric and cloak were ripped in a number of places. The sword that hung at his waist was gone.

“You got about ten minutes,” the turnkey said, leaving.

D’Artagnan stepped close to the barred door.

“Don’t worry, Comrade,” he whispered. “We’ll get you out of here if we have to tear the building down.” Porthos looked at D’Artagnan and Phillip with sad, mournful eyes, but he said nothing.

Phillip asked the question he had been dreading.

“What happened, Porthos?”

Porthos shrugged his massive shoulders and his eyes were downcast. “I am not quite sure,” he answered, rubbing one hand over his forehead. He looked up suddenly and his eyes were flashing. “But I only did what any gentleman of honor would have done under the circumstances. And for that the gendarmes come in swarms and swarms and drag me off here in a screeching tumbril. Mon Dieu, I have never seen so many gendarmes.”

“But what did you do?” Phillip persisted.

“It was not my fault,” Porthos said stiffly. “I have learned that I acted hastily, that I acted, perhaps, foolishly, but how was I to know?”

“How were you to know what?” Phillip asked.

“That it was all make-believe,” Porthos said moodily.

“Start at the beginning,” Phillip said. He wished frantically that Porthos would tell his story and tell it quickly, so that he could start figuring on how to get him out of jail, if that were at all possible.

“When you left I turned on the little box that makes music,” Porthos said.

“You mean after we left the apartment this morning you turned on the radio?” Phillip asked. He was bewildered by Porthos’ irrelevant digression. He had demonstrated the radio to the musketeers the previous evening, but...

“I turned on the little box that makes the music,” Porthos repeated, glowering.

“Yes, go on,” Phillip said helplessly. He realized that Porthos was grimly determined to tell his story in his own way.

“But I do not hear the music,” Porthos said. “Instead I hear voices. I listen carefully. One voice is that of a woman and the other is that of a man. They are arguing. The woman has jewels and the man wants her to give them to him. He is a scoundrel. I could tell it from his voice.” Porthos’ eyes were stormy as his mind flashed back to the villainy of that voice from the ether. “I shouted at her not to give him the jewels,” he continued, “but she could not hear me. Anyway, she did not need my advice. She knew the man for the scoundrel he was and ordered him away. But he would not leave. They were alone. She was helpless.” Porthos’ voice trembled with rage. “He took them from her by force and left her bound and helpless in a closet. And the river waters were rising,” Porthos cried darkly, his voice breaking with the heat of his emotion.

“What river?” Phillip asked.

“I don’t know,” Porthos shrugged. “They didn’t say. But the water was rising on the bamboo foundations of the little hut and this poor girl was helpless. The scoundrel had taken leave with the jewels.”

D’Artagnan had followed Porthos’ narrative with tense interest.

“What happened then, Comrade?” he demanded.

“Another voice came from the little box,” Porthos said, frowning.

“And what did this new voice say?”

“I didn’t understand. It was all about soap,” Porthos said.

“Soap?”

“Yes,” Porthos nodded. “This new voice talked interminably about a soap he called sleezy-suds, that’s all I could make out.”

“But the girl!” D’Artagnan cried. “She will be dead by this time.”

Phillip put a hand to his forehead wearily. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He suspected that he might do both.

“Go on with your story, Porthos,” he said quietly.

“While this man talks about soap,” Porthos continued, “I buckle on my sword. My blood is stirred. I cannot stand idle while villainy goes unpunished and damsels need the protection of my blade.”

“Well spoken!” D’Artagnan cried. “Go on,” said Phillip.

“The voice suddenly stops talking about soap.” Porthos said excitedly. “The voice exclaims, ‘who will save Mary Malloy?’ I draw my sword,” Porthos cried, gripping the bars in his excitement. “I say, ‘I will. Where can I find this villain?’”

“Yes?” D’Artagnan breathed.

“The voice,” Porthos said, “answers me. It says, ‘This adventure took place in the central studios of the Federated Broadcasting Co., the corners of Lake and Michigan.’”

“I think I know the rest,” Phillip said. “You went down to the Federated studios to rescue Mary Malloy, didn’t you?”

“But of course,” Porthos said. “It was what any red-blooded son of France would have done.”

“And things didn’t turn out so well, did they?”

“No,” Porthos said, shaking his big head sadly, “things did not turn out well at all. No one seemed to understand what I was talking about. A man laughed at me. I drew my sword. And then the gendarmes came, by the dozens.” Porthos sighed. “I have learned since that the whole thing was a make-believe play.”

Phillip patted his shoulder gently. “I’ll talk to the sergeant,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“It is all so confusing,” Porthos said wearily. “I wish I were back in my quiet France.”

Phillip went to look for the sergeant. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he knew he couldn’t tell the truth of the matter. If he tried to explain that Porthos, a musketeer from the eighteenth century, had gone berserk listening to the fictional tribulations of a heroine in a radio soap drama, he would wind up behind bars himself.

He found the sergeant at his desk, grimly studying his reports.

“Well,” he said, looking up, “you’ve seen your friend now. Maybe you’d be good enough to tell me what’s wrong with him.”

“Er — he’s very sorry about the trouble he caused,” Phillip said.

“Well that’s fine,” the sergeant said sarcastically. “He’s sorry so we’ll just open the doors and let him go, we will not!”

“He lost his head. You see,” Phillip said, thinking desperately, “he’s a radio actor.”

“I thought there was something wrong with him,” the sergeant muttered.

“And he forgot himself. Actors are like that sometimes. They become so absorbed in their parts that they just aren’t themselves at all.”

“That’s no excuse for a man behaving like Tarzan of the Apes,” the sergeant said. “But as long as it wasn’t anything criminal he did, we can set bail for him. Are you willing to take him into your custody until his case comes up?”

“Yes,” Phillip sighed. “I’ll take care of him.”

The details were arranged and in an hour Porthos stood outside the jail with Phillip and D’Artagnan, a free man.

“Well,” D’Artagnan said, “that is over. And now I am hungry and thirsty. Let us forget our troubles with a bottle of wine. Mon Dieu, it seems ages since my palate has welcomed a cooling draught of burgundy.” Porthos shook his head sadly.

“My appetite and thirst are gone forever, I think,” he said. “I want to get away from all this strange civilization and think.”

Phillip realized that he too was hungry. And if ever a man needed a drink he was that person.

He hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of his boarding house. Turning to Porthos, he said, “This cab will take you home. Aramis and Athos are there and they are worried about you. Tell them D’Artagnan and I will be along soon.”

Porthos nodded and climbed into the cab. When it had pulled away from the curb, Phillip turned to D’Artagnan.

“Now for that drink,” he said.

Chapter VII

Phillip led D’Artagnan to a swanky bar in one of the downtown hotels. For some reason he felt like celebrating. He knew that the next day he would have to start thinking seriously about finding another job, but today he refused to let that worry him.

They had barely given their order to a waiter when D’Artagnan grabbed his arm excitedly.

“Look!” he said. “At the table on the other side of the room.”

Phillip looked and saw a beautiful, young red-haired girl sitting with an impeccably clad, middle-aged man who wore a gleaming monocle over one eye.

“What about them?” Phillip asked blankly.

“It is the girl,” D’Artagnan said excitedly. “The girl I saw on the street car this morning. She was in trouble. How could you forget that face?”

Phillip looked again and saw that D’Artagnan was right. The man with whom she was seated was tall and lean, with cold blue eyes and slightly graying hair. There was a saber scar on his cheek that pulled his mouth into a faint, perpetual sneer.

“What luck!” D’Artagnan cried, springing to his feet.

“Wait a minute,” Phillip said; “you can’t go over there.”

“Why not?’

“She is with a man. Such things just aren’t done.”

“Bah! It is about time they were, then,” D’Artagnan said, grinning. “Excuse me.” He bowed and strode across the floor to the girl’s table. Nervously, Phillip followed, thinking he might be able to smooth over the situation.

D’Artagnan bowed to the girl with a flourish.

“This is such a great and unexpected pleasure that I am overwhelmed. I feared this morning that I might never see you again, but the gods are kind.” He pulled up a chair and sat down.

The red haired girl looked at him and there was relief in her eyes.

“It is nice to see you again,” she said warmly. “I hardly had time to thank you this morning. I see you have changed your costume.”

D’Artagnan glanced down at his tweeds and smiled.

“Yes, I was becoming somewhat conspicuous.”

The girl turned to her companion. “Major Lanser, this is the young man I told you about.”

Major Lanser inclined his head briefly toward D’Artagnan and then turned to the girl. A humorless smile touched his thin lips and the saber scar on his cheek twisted.

“How interesting,” he murmured. “Will you be good enough to tell him we are busy?”

“Oh, but we aren’t too busy to talk to gallant young rescuers,” the girl said, laughing. But there was a strange, odd note to her laughter, as if it were close to hysteria.

“How kind of you,” D’Artagnan said. His eyes were watching Major Lanser with quiet speculation. There was a tension at the table that was smoulderingly tangible.

D’Artagnan suddenly grinned disarmingly and pulled up another chair to the table and waved to Phillip to sit down.

“My friend,” he explained, “I hope you won’t mind.” He smiled at the girl. “It will be someone for the Major to talk to.”

The Major’s lean, bard face flushed red as Phillip settle himself cautiously at the table. Phillip felt the peculiar tension that seemed to crack across the table, and when he looked into the Major’s ice-blue, slate-hard eyes he felt a strange prickling of fear.

The Major put his hand on the girl’s arm.

“I think you must bid your friends good-bye,” he said quietly. “It is time for us to leave.”

“No,” the girl said. Her eyes met D’Artagnan’s in a mute appeal. “I’m — I’m not ready to leave yet.”

“I think you are, my dear,” the Major said. His fingers closed over the girl’s arm and the knuckles of his hand suddenly whitened. “You wouldn’t want to cause your friends any — er — inconvenience, would you?”

The girl’s eyes closed and her face was gray.

“No, you mustn’t—” she said. “I’ll come with you.” The last words were a bare whisper.

D’Artagnan’s keen eyes flashed like the glinting blade of a rapier, as he studied Major Lanser’s coldly expresssionless face.

“Major Lanser,” he said softly, “the young lady obviously would rather stay and finish her drink. But you mustn’t let that keep you.” He emphasized the last word carefully.

The Major looked at him for an instant and the silence was tense and charged. Then he shrugged and his hand released the girl’s arm. He stood up and smiled down at the girl.

“You will find my way would have been wiser,” he murmured. He turned slightly to face D’Artagnan and the smile was gone from his lips. “I hope we meet again,” he said.

When he had gone, D’Artagnan turned impulsively to the girl.

“Forgive me, but I do not like your friend,” he said. “Can’t you tell me what is troubling you? It would make me very happy to be able to help you.”

“You mustn’t see me again,” the girl said. “I have already allowed you to place yourself in a very dangerous position. If you ever see Major Lanser again, keep well out of his way.” She smiled and stood up. “You have done me a great service and I will always be grateful. Good-bye.”

Before D’Artagnan could speak the girl moved swiftly away from the table. D’Artagnan sprang to his feet, but the girl, by that time, had disappeared through a door that led to the lobby of the hotel.

“This time I shall not stand like a stupid clod,” D’Artagnan said. “Hurry, there is still time for us to catch her. She needs our help.”

Phillip paid the waiter. His thoughts were wheeling nervously.

“You’ve got to be careful,” he said worriedly to D’Artagnan; “that Major Lanser is dangerous. I could tell that from his eyes. They were as cold as the eyes of a snake.”

“But that girl needs help,” D’Artagnan said impatiently. “Come along. If the Major proves troublesome it will be most unfortunate — for the Major.” With Phillip pattering at his heels he strode across the floor to the lobby. Except for a few men reading newspapers, the room was deserted.

“Possibly she took a cab,” Phillip suggested.

Grimly, D’Artagnan shoved through the revolving door to the street. He grabbed the doorman by the arm.

“Did you see a young lady leave here a moment ago? A tall, red-haired girl?”

“I called a cab for her,” the doorman answered.

“Was she alone?”

“Yes, she was alone when she got into the cab, but a man stepped in after her before the cab started. They left together.”

“What did the man look like?” D’Artagnan demanded.

The doorman frowned. “I didn’t get a good look, but I noticed he seemed pretty well dressed. And, let me see, he wore a monocle. I think he had a scar on his face, but I’m not sure.”

“Did you hear the address they gave the driver?” Phillip asked.

“I think he said Mannerly Towers,” the doorman answered.

“Call us a cab,” D’Artagnan said. “What do you intend to do?” Phillip asked nervously.

“Follow them, of course. We may already be too late.”

“But if this girl is in trouble,” Phillip said, “it’s a matter for the police. You don’t know what you might be sticking your neck into. Let me call the station and have a squad of men sent over to the Mannerly Towers.”

D’Artagnan shook his head. “The gendarmes have an unhappy faculty of making a supreme mess of anything that requires tact and diplomacy. We must handle this ourselves. But you are right in one respect. We may need help. Call your room and tell Aramis. Porthos and Athos that I need them and give them the address of Mannerly Towers. Tell them to come there as quickly as possible. I would rather have them at my side than all the gendarmes in the city.”

Phillip did as he was directed and when he returned to the sidewalk a cab was waiting and D’Artagnan was waiting impatiently.

Phillip crawled into the cab beside D’Artagnan and sank back against the cushions as it pulled away from the curb with a roar.

“Mannerly Towers!” D’Artagnan snapped. “Quickly!”

Chapter VIII

D’Artagnan and Phillip stepped from the cab before the imposing facade of the Mannerly Towers. The building was located at the near North side and it had only taken them a few minutes to reach it, but D’Artagnan had fidgeted all the way.

When Phillip paid the driver he strode toward the main entrance.

“Don’t you think we’d better go around the back way?” Phillip said. “There’s no point in advertising our entry.”

“There is no time for such maneuvering,” D’Artagnan said. “We must depend on the surprise value of a frontal attack.”

The desk clerk looked inquiringly at them.

“We wish to see Major Lanser,” Phillip said. “What is his suite number?”

“Thirteen-forty,” the clerk answered, “but is the Major expecting you?”

“Yes!” D’Artagnan snapped.

Phillip led the way to the elevators. The elevator operator shot them up to the thirteenth floor, deposited them and started back down.

The corridor was carpeted with a luxurious gray rug that muffled their footsteps as they moved along the hall to a gleaming white door bearing the number 1340.

“This is it,” Phillip said in a whisper, “but don’t you think we’d better wait until Athos and the others get here?”

“I don’t know,” D’Artagnan frowned.

He stopped speaking as the door in front of them opened and the tall figure of Major Lanser appeared in the doorway.

“A pleasant surprise,” the Major said quietly. “Did you forget that the desk clerk would inform me that you were on your way up?”

Looking over the Major’s shoulder, Phillip saw a long, empty room, furnished in quiet good taste.

“What is it you wanted?” the Major asked. His face was set in hard, expressionless lines, but his eyes were as dull and cold as death.

“The girl,” D’Artagnan said, meeting his gaze squarely. “We know that she accompanied you here and it is to be our pleasure to relieve her of your unpleasant company.”

“So?” the Major smiled. “You are still playing the role of gallant rescuer, are you? I am sorry to disappoint you. The girl is not here. You are welcome to look, if that will ease your mind.”

He stepped aside and bowed mockingly.

D’Artagnan regarded him coolly for an instant, then stepped past him into the long room. Phillip followed hesitantly. The Major closed the door and strolled to the center of the room, his thin face cynically amused.

“Are you satisfied?” he said softly.

“No,” D’Artagnan said. He glanced about the room with narrowed eyes. He noted a set of fencing foils above the mantle, a picture of the Major in uniform, but nothing to indicate the presence of the red-haired girl.

“There are other rooms, are there not?” he asked.

The Major smiled. “I was hoping you would have enough sense to be satisfied, but obviously you haven’t.” He raised his hand in a signal and a door at the end of the room opened. A squat man with a gun in his hand stepped into the room and moved to the side wall, where his gun covered D’Artagnan and Phillip.

Phillip swallowed nervously and he could hear the terrified thudding of his heart in the sudden stillness of the room.

Another man stepped through the doorway, but he was not alone. At his side was the red-haired girl. Her eyes were enormous pools in the whiteness of her face. Phillip saw that her wrists were taped together behind her.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have followed me,” she said, her voice breaking. She glanced swiftly, imploringly at Major Lanser. “Please don’t hurt them. Let them go. They don’t know a thing. I give you my word.”

“Your solicitude is very touching,” Major Lanser said. “But, unfortunately, I can’t do as you suggest. It would be very foolish of me to let them go now. They have already seen too much. No, I am sorry, but they must be disposed of as soon as possible.”

Phillip was standing beside a table on which a heavy metal ashtray rested. He was about six feet from the man who held the gun. Almost of its own volition his hand moved slowly to the ashtray and closed over it. His heart was hammering frantically. All of his cautious, common sense instincts were demanding that he put his hand back to his side and forget the wild idea in his head. But instead he lifted the ashtray slowly from the table. No one was watching him. No one saw him move until he turned and threw the heavy weight squarely at the closely cropped head of the squat little man with the gun.

And then it was too late for anyone to do anything about it. For the ashtray caught the man directly between the eyes and he fell forward on his face without a whimper.

But then everybody in the room seemed to galvanize into action.

The man beside the girl lunged forward, but she tripped him with her foot as he passed, sending him sprawling to the floor. Major Lanser wheeled and leaped toward the mantle. His hand closed over a slim, deadly fencing foil and, with an oath, he whirled to face D’Artagnan.

But the musketeer had moved, too. With a lithe sidestep he evaded the Major’s savage lunge and leaped for the other foil. With it gleaming in his hand, he swung to meet Major Lanser, a grim smile on his face.

Major Lanser moved forward, catlike, the sword in his hand twitching like a snake about to strike.

“This will be interesting,” he murmured. Over his shoulder he snapped to the man who had tripped over the girl’s foot, “Watch the others. I will handle our collegiate Don Quixote.”

“No!” the girl cried. “It isn’t fair. He hasn’t a chance against you.”

“I will be gentle with him,” Major Lanser smiled. He moved forward in a lithe deadly fencer’s crouch. “I will not kill him quickly.”

“You fiend!” the girl cried. She tried vainly to jerk loose from the man who held her. “Don’t duel him!” she cried, struggling to face D’Artagnan. “Don’t you see, he’s planning to cut you to ribbons?”

D’Artagnan was leaning against the mantle, almost lazily, but his narrowed eyes watched Lanser’s every move.

“Save your sympathy for the Major,” he murmured. “He is more likely to have need of it. I am not exactly unaccustomed to the sport of fencing.”

“This is not going to be a sporting contest,” the Major said grimly. With a sudden feint he lunged to the right, then crossed back to the left and his sword flashed at D’Artagnan.

Philip cried out involuntarily, but D’Artagnan’s sword had somehow sprung magically to meet the Major’s, and steel crashed unavailingly against steel.

“A good defense,” the Major said, breathing through stiff lips.

“Let us test yours,” D’Artagnan said cooly.

His sword seemed to flash with the speed of light. His lean body shifted forward.

A hoarse shuddering gasp broke from the Major’s throat.

The point of D’Artagnan’s blade was touching his shirt and D’Artagnan was poised to lunge, a grim, merciless smile hovering about his lips.

The Major’s sword was at his side. He had been caught completely off guard by the speed and skill of D’Artagnan’s thrust.

His breathing was ragged as he waited for the cold steel to drive forward into his body. But D’Artagnan stepped back and raised his sword.

“En guarde!” he cried. “You wanted time to kill me slowly and I shall give you all the time you need.”

Major Lanser raised his sword and stepped back, watching D’Artagnan with nervously eyes. The stiff hard lines of his face were dissolving into a mask of fear. He wet his thin, lips with his tongue as D’Artagnan moved slowly toward him.

“It is not really fair for me to use my right arm,” D’Artagnan murmured, almost to himself. “Athos, himself, has trouble with my right arm.”

With a smile he shifted the foil to his left hand. “This should give you a better chance, Major Lanser.”

Major Lanser lunged forward savagely, his face twisted with an insane rage. There was a blazing light of anticipated triumph in his eyes.

“No man alive can stand against me with his left hand,” he cried.

D’Artagnan parried the thrust with a turn of his wrist, without shifting the position of his body.

“There is always the first time for such things,” he said.

Lanser lunged forward again, his breath coming raggedly, and D’Artagnan slipped to one side with the ease of a shadow moving against a wall. His blade flashed down in a spinning arc. Steel rang against steel as Lanser’s blade flew from his hand and fell to the floor a dozen feet from where he stood.

“You seem to have lost something, Major,” D’Artagnan murmured. His blade was resting lightly in his hand and the Major stared at it as if it were something bewitched.

“You — you devil!” he cried hoarsely. “Who are you?” His face was flushed and there was a flicker of foam on his lips. With a sudden movement he sprang back and shouted to the man who was holding the red haired girl.

“Cover him. Drop him if he takes a step toward me.”

Phillip cried, “Watch out.”

Major Lanser’s henchman shifted around and covered D’Artagnan with his gun.

“All right, buddy,” he snapped. “Take one move and I’ll let you have it.”

D’Artagnan looked at the man and shrugged.

“You seem to be in the saddle,” he said. He bowed ironically to Major Lanser and tossed his foil to the floor.

The Major’s breathing gradually returned to normal.

“You will pay for that little exhibition, my friend,” he said to D’Artagnan.

Philip watched the scene tensely. The man with the gun, a heavy-set, florid individual who looked like a movie gangster, was standing with his back to the open door, about twelve feet from where he stood. There was nothing within reach which he could throw at the man and he was too far away to tackle. There was nothing he or anyone else could do.

“You have a silencer on that gun,” the Major snapped to his gunman, “let our young friend have it-.”

The man raised his gun slowly and took aim.

At that very instant a huge shape appeared in the doorway behind him, and a deep voice said, “Mon Dieu, we are barely in time!”

The gunman wheeled about, his face a mask of incredulous surprise. Phillip screamed, “Be careful!” but his admonition was unnecessary.

Porthos’ huge fist crashed into the gunman’s face. The man hit the floor in a sprawling crash and the gun slipped from his nervous fingers.

Porthos stepped over the thug’s body and Athos and Aramis followed him into the room.

Athos shook his head slowly.

“My dear boy,” he murmured to D’Artagnan, “won’t you ever learn to keep out of trouble.”

D’Artagnan smiled, turning to his companions, and the Major seized that opportunity to make a break. Ducking swiftly he scooped up the foil that D’Artagnan had dropped and bolted for the door.

Athos was the only person who stood between him and freedom.

“Out of my way!” Lanser snarled.

Athos was still wearing his pin-stripe suit, but his sword was buckled at this waist. He dropped back a step and his blade flashed into his hand.

“I’m afraid I don’t like your tone,” he said quietly.

Lanser lunged forward, his blade driving for Athos’ heart, but Athos slipped aside easily. Lanser, his eyes glaring with mad frustration, grabbed the red-haired girl by the waist and swung her around in front of him as a shield.

“Now,” he grated. “Stand aside!”

With his sword extended he lunged forward again, shielding his body with the girl’s.

Athos murmured, “You are making my task a bit more difficult.”

His smile was like the flicker of light on a rapier as he feinted to the left, drawing the Major in that direction.

His move back to the right was quicker than an eye could follow. The sword in his hand — the coolest, most daring hand in all France — leaped forward like a bolt of flashing light and Major Lanser stiffened involuntarily, a cry breaking from his lips. For an instant his side had been exposed, and in that instant the blade of Athos had found its mark.

With a strangled curse the Major released the girl and stepped back. He tried desperately to raise his sword arm but it was a vain effort. His tall spare frame broke at the middle and he fell to the floor and lay still.

D’Artagnan sprang to the girl’s side and removed the tape from her wrists. She swayed against him and he held her close.

“My compliments, Athos,” he said, looking over the girl’s head at his friend. “Your hand has lost none if its skill.”

Athos saluted with his sword, “Thank you.”

The girl glanced down at the Major’s still form and a slight shudder passed over her slender body.

“Can’t you tell us now what this is all about?” D’Artagnan asked gently.

“I can now,” the girl said. “I am an agent for the Free French forces of General De Gaulle. My mission here was to pass along vital information to a British agent. When I arrived I was met by Major Lanser, whose credentials indicated that he was the British agent I was seeking. But for some reason I didn’t trust him. I stalled him off, hoping to find something in the meantime to confirm or alleviate my suspicions. He became more and more insistent that I pass over my information. I couldn’t go to the police or the F.B.I. because of the confidential nature of my work.” She looked at D’Artagnan. “That is when you arrived on the scene. Obviously the Major could afford to wait no longer for he decided to get the information from me by force, if necessary.”

“You say you are an agent for the Free French?” Athos asked.

“Yes. Sometimes we are called the Fighting French.”

“There in none other,” Aramis said. D’Artagnan looked down at the girl and his lean face was serious.

“Couldn’t we help you in some way?” he asked. “I would be happy to place my sword under the command of this General De Gaulle.”

“And I think he would be equally happy to have you,” the girl said. “There is work to do all over the world. In Tunis, in Africa, in London, everywhere there is a need for men of resourcefulness and courage.”

D’Artagnan swung about to the three musketeers.

“What say, comrades? Here is the opportunity of a fighting man’s life. The enemy is everywhere; the arena is the world; and the prize is our beloved France!”

Athos looked down at the floor, his face grave.

“Aramis, Porthos, and I have been talking this over,” he said. “We are going to fight for France — but we are going to fight for France in France, on the soil of own country.”

“But that is not possible,” the girl said. “There is no way to get there.” Athos glanced fleetingly at Aramis and Porthos and then he smiled faintly. “We shall find a way,” he said.

The girl looked at the three men for an instant and there was a strange wonder in her eyes.

“I believe you will,” she murmured softly.

Phillip watched the scene and there was a strange constriction in his throat.

He cleared his throat apologetically.

He said to Athos, “Could I go with you? I know many things about the customs of today that would be valuable. And I am sure now of not only what I want to live for, but also of what I want to die for.”

Athos smiled at him and threw an arm over his shoulder.

“Why we couldn’t get along without you!” he said.

Phillip felt that something inside his chest might burst with his happiness.

Athos turned to D’Artagnan and his smile was sad and gentle.

“This is farewell, comrade,” he said.

“Perhaps,” D’Artagnan said. “But we have parted in the past comrades, but a strange fate has always brought us together again.”

Porthos and Aramis joined arms with Athos and, with Phillip between them, they backed toward the door.

“Remember,” Athos smiled, “One for all—”

D’Artagnan’s arm tightened about the girl’s shoulder and he looked down into her shining face. “And all for one,” he murmured.

When he looked up the doorway was empty.

Genie of Bagdad

First published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1943.

Chapter I

Drake Masterson stood up and smiled with pleasure when Sharon Ward entered the room. Most men did so and he was no exception to the rule.

Sharon was a tall, stunningly built creature with a mane of bright red hair that fell to her bare shoulders in dramatically effective waves. Her eyes were green in the exciting pallor of her face but when she smiled it was like flashing on a light in a dark room.

“Hello, Drake,” she said, crossing the long, luxuriously furnished drawing room of her apartment with lithe grace. “Did I keep you waiting?”

Drake put down his drink and took one of her outstretched hands.

“Not long.” His eyes went over her appreciatively. She was wearing a strapless evening gown that fitted her slim body like a crimson sheath. “Anyway,” he grinned, “it was worth it.”

“A pretty speech,” Sharon murmured. She straightened his white tie slightly and flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the shining satin lapels of his dress coat. “It deserves another. You look like the ideal career diplomat, smooth, immaculate and imperturbable. Do you have the blueprints of our latest battleship tucked away in your breast pocket? That’s all you need.”

“Hardly,” Drake smiled, “since the blueprints of a battleship weigh about two thousand pounds. But I might have a code message or two around somewhere.” His grey eyes crinkled at the corners and his lean, dark face was amused. “Will that do?”

“Perfectly,” Sharon said. “And maybe we’ll meet a spy in a black net dress at the party tonight who’ll slip you a Micky and vanish with your code messages tucked down the bosom of her dress. That’s still the traditional place of concealment, isn’t it?”

“You’ve got me there,” Drake said. “You’ve obviously read more spy stories than I have.” He glanced at his watch. “Would you like a cigarette before we leave? We’ve just about got time.”

Sharon nodded and took a cigarette from the silver case he extended.

“What kind of an affair is tonight’s going to be?” she asked.

“Just a routine reception for the Turkish minister,” Drake answered. “There’ll be quite a crowd. Large sprinkling of important gentlemen from the East who are here on lend-lease business; our own representatives and Britain’s. That’s about all.”

He lit Sharon’s cigarette and his own, returned the lighter to his pocket and smiled at the girl.

“You look a bit worried. Anything wrong?”

Sharon made an impatient gesture with her cigarette and strolled to the windows that overlooked the row of vast white government buildings. She cupped her elbow in the palm of her right hand and stared moodily at the scene.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said at last. “Probably just nerves.” She blew a thick column of blue smoke toward the ceiling and then turned suddenly to face Drake. “It’s just that I feel so damn useless,” she said. “I’d like to be doing something important in this war instead of drifting around with the rest of the Washington butterflies.” Her eyes were bitter and dark against the pallor of her cheeks. “I missed the Air Transport because—”

“I know,” Drake interrupted with a grin. “You missed because your license was torn up by the civil commission for stunting at five hundred feet and endangering lives and property!”

“Oh, I know all that,” Sharon said, “but you’d think they’d overlook it in times like these.” She crushed out her cigarette with a vicious gesture. “I’m so bored and disgusted with myself I feel I’m losing my mind.”

“Well we’re all in the same boat,” Drake said seriously. “I don’t like Washington any more than you do, but my job happens to be here for the time being.”

Sharon smiled faintly. “You’re just trying to make me feel good by comparing your set-up with mine. You’re in diplomacy and attached to one of the hottest departments in the capitol. Why, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of the East, the most dynamic section of the world today.”

“Still,” Drake shrugged, “I’d rather be out where the action is. They could get some octogenarian to handle my work and let me get out where I could do something a little more definite.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Sharon said impatiently. She put another cigarette in her mouth with a quick, decisive gesture. “You’re one of the foremost authorities in the world on Oriental languages. Why should the government let you go out and get your head blown off?”

Drake smiled at her vehemence. “You’d think I was absolutely irreplaceable to hear you talk,” he said.

“Well, you’re good,” Sharon said stubbornly. She grinned suddenly and her entire face kindled. “You must be. You taught me Arabic and that would qualify anyone as an expert.”

“I guess you’ve got me there,” Drake said. He glanced at his watch again, then put out his cigarette and got to his feet. “It’s about time for us to be on our way. This party tonight may cheer us up a little. Did I mention that it was going to be a costume affair?” Sharon eyed him with indignant surprise.

“You did not,” she said. “And this is a fine time to be telling me. Won’t I look right in step with this backless evening gown? And what about you?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Drake said. “We weren’t expected to be in costume anyway. The State Department has a peculiar antipathy toward any of its members running around in masquerade so I’m excused. And naturally you are too.”

“Well, that’s better,” Sharon said. “You had me worried for a moment. Excuse me a minute, I’ll get a wrap.” Drake lit another cigarette...

The reception for the Turkish ambassador was held in a large estate on the outskirts of Washington. Sharon and Drake were ushered into the vast drawing room by an imperturbable butler, dressed for the occasion in a flowing robe and great baggy trousers of white silk that clasped at the ankles a few inches above curling suede slippers.

Sharon gasped with delight when they entered the splendidly decorated room. Walls and ceilings were hung with luxurious, jewel encrusted drapes and great animal skins were scattered over the gleaming floor.

Huge divans, covered in gaudy silk and strewn with fluffy pillows had replaced the conventional furniture; braziers of incense were hanging in all corners of the room and from their brass tops a yellow, aromatic smoke was issuing.

Except for a handful of Americans and Britons in evening clothes, everyone was wearing the flowing silk robes of the ancient East. The men wore turbans around their heads and the women, many of whom were beautiful, were decked with jeweled tiaras.

“How stunning!” Sharon whispered to Drake. “Everything looks so real it’s amazing!”

They were taken to their host and after a few polite exchanges Drake murmured an excuse and escaped with Sharon toward the dining-room where refreshments were being served.

The room was thick with incense and more exotically garbed guests. Food and drink were being dispensed by serving girls in gaily colored silk trousers, tight brassieres and chaste veils.

Drake garnered two glasses and led Sharon to a divan. They lit cigarettes, sipped their drinks and watched the party.

“Fortunately,” Drake said, “we can leave early.”

“Oh, I’m enjoying this,” Sharon said. “But I could do with a little less incense.” She coughed and fanned herself with a handkerchief. “It seems to be a little rich for my taste. Could you open a window?”

“Sure thing,” Drake said.

He put down his drink and stepped to a row of draped windows directly behind their divan. He tried unsuccessfully to open them, then returned to Sharon’s side with a shrug.

“Funny,” he said, “they’re bolted shut.”

“Well, never mind,” Sharon smiled. “I can put up with it for a while.” Drake frowned at the windows. “Yes, but it’s odd. Supposing there was a fire?”

“Oh, there you go being practical again,” Sharon laughed. “Please don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I thought it was going to worry you.”

“Well it does,” Drake said.

“Now you’re being stuffy,” Sharon smiled. “If you started worrying about everything that was irregular you’d have a full time job on your hands.”

While they were talking a smiling little man waddled across to them with a glass of hot, spiced wine in his plump, pink hand.

“How do you do?” he said, smiling until his face seemed to be a net-work of soft creases.

Drake glanced at him in surprise; for the man’s salutation had been delivered in Arabic; not modern Arabic, but a variation of the tongue that was now considered archaic. His astonishment was the same as if he’d been addressed in the English of Chaucer.

Drake answered him courteously, using the same archaic dialect. The smiling fat man appeared delighted.

“How nice, how nice,” he said, rubbing his plump hands together. “It is so nice to hear my tongue spoken.” Sharon tugged Drake’s sleeve.

“What goes on?” she asked in a whisper. “He isn’t using the Arabic you taught me. Although I can make out the general meaning of what he’s saying.”

“It’s an old dialect,” Drake answered. “I haven’t heard it since I was a post-grad.” He turned to the fat man who was regarding them with genial, twinkling eyes. “My name is Masterson, Drake Masterson. May I present Miss Sharon Ward.”

“I am charmed,” the little round man murmured, still speaking in ancient Arabic. He bowed extravagantly. He was dressed in loose red trousers and a short jeweled vest. A tassel-topped fez was set at a rakish angle on his pumpkin-shaped head. His face was a soft, pasty white and his little eyes looked like shiny raisins set in a pan of bread dough.

“My name is Humai,” he said. “I am very, very glad to meet both of you. Could I get you a glass of wine or something to eat?”

“I’m afraid not,” Drake smiled, “but thanks just the same. As a matter of fact, Miss Ward and I were just thinking about leaving.”

“Oh, you can’t go yet,” the little man cried. His eyes twinkled merrily. “The party is just beginning. Do you not find everything delightful?”

“Yes, it’s very nice,” Sharon said politely. She coughed slightly and fanned herself. The thick swirling clouds of incense moved sluggishly from the draft caused by her hand.

“Do you not like the incense?” the little fat man inquired solicitously.

“It’s pretty thick,” Sharon said. She coughed again and smiled wanly at Drake. “I think I’ll have to step outside and get a breath of air.”

“Sure thing,” Drake said. “I’ll go with you. Do you need a wrap?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Drake helped her to rise. Humai watched with a solicitous expression on his round white face.

“I am very sorry,” he murmured. “That’s all right,” Drake said. “Miss Ward will be fine after a little air.” Sharon put her hand to her forehead. “Yes, I’ll be all right,” she said. “My knees feel a little weak, that’s all.”

“It is so unfortunate,” Humai murmured. “The entertainment has not yet started. It is unfortunate that you must miss it.”

“I think we’ll mange to bear up under the loss,” Drake said drily.

He put an arm about Sharon’s waist and started across the room. The fumes of incense were swirling about his head in a cloying suffocating cloud.

“But you do not know what you’re missing,” Humai said, trotting beside them on his short, fat legs. His round, brown face was creased anxiously.

“Please, Drake,” Sharon murmured weakly against his shoulder. “Let’s hurry.”

Humai tugged at Drake’s arm. “Look just one instant,” he begged. He waved his hand in the air and suddenly, to the left of the girl, a swirling segment of the smoke began to coalesce into the shadowy outlines of a human figure. Sharon drew away from Drake and stared with amazement at the figure, whose shape and outline were becoming more definite with each second.

She threw her hands up in an instinctive gesture of astonishment as the figure completed its emergence from the smoke and stood before her — a towering, brown-skinned, turbaned genie, bearing an immense tray of sparkling jewels in his arms.

“Drake!” Sharon cried. Her voice was a blend of incredulity, astonishment and fear.

Drake stepped to her side and the heavy, dense smoke billowed in the wake of his passage. He coughed as the spiced fumes seemed to bite into his lungs.

“It’s some kind of a trick, darling,” he gasped.

Humai was at his side, grinning.

“Yes, it is a trick, but such a nice one,” he said. “Would you care to see more?”

He waved his pudgy hand and the towering apparition vanished slowly into the smoke. “I will show you, now—”

“We’re getting out of here,” Drake snapped. “Miss Ward needs fresh air.”

He was getting a little annoyed with this bland, round little man and found it hard to keep the irritation from his voice.

“Let me help you to the door,” Humai suggested anxiously.

“We can find it,” Drake said. “Thanks.”

Humai took his arm gently.

“Please,” he said, “there is a side door that leads to the garden. It is quicker, I will show you the way.”

“All right,” Drake said. He felt annoyed with himself for his irritation. After all, the little fellow only wanted to help. “Let’s go,” he said.

He put an arm around Sharon’s waist.

“How do you feel?” he asked, concerned.

“All right, I guess,” she whispered. She put a hand slowly to her forehead. “Everything seems sort of vague and fuzzy. Are all the lights off?”

“Of course not,” Drake said. He glanced around the room worriedly.

The place did seem darker. The electric illumination had been replaced by huge candles that guttered splendidly in the bizarre gloom of the tapestried room. “It’s just this damn incense,” he said, coughing.

Humai took his hand.

“Just follow me,” he said. “We will be outside in a moment.” He hesitated a moment. “Don’t you think she had better walk without support?” he asked gently. “The exercise would do her good.”

“No,” Drake said grimly. “She needs help. Please hurry.”

“Of course,” Humai said.

He padded toward the center of the room and then turned right down a long corridor that Drake did not remember seeing when they arrived. Drake followed him, supporting Sharon with an arm about her waist.

The corridor was murky with the same thick incense and he couldn’t make out any details, except that the ceiling seemed to tower hundreds of feet above their heads and that the carpet on which they walked was incredibly thick and soft.

Humai walked directly ahead of them, waddling slightly from side to side and turning occasionally to smile reassuringly at them.

“How much longer?” Drake asked anxiously.

“Not very far,” Humai answered. “It is only a little way from here.”

Drake tried to peer down the length of the corridor, to pierce the gloomy, incense-laden air, but it was impossible. He could only see a dozen feet ahead, before the visibility was obscured by the thick pall-like curtain of yellow, pungent incense.

“Just a few more steps,” he whispered to Sharon.

“I’m all right,” she murmured sleepily. She was almost a dead weight on his arm. Drake attempted to walk more rapidly but he found that his legs were curiously weak. He was practically staggering. There was a peculiar cloudiness before his eyes that was not caused by the dense vapors of the incense.

He shook his head and coughed rackingly. Tears were streaming from his eyes and he was on the point of collapse when a sudden strong draft of cool, bracing air blew into his face. It was as reviving as a plunge into a cold mountain lake.

He breathed deeply, gratefully, and he could feel the cloudiness fading from his brain. Dimly he could see Humai standing at an open door, beckoning to him with a friendly hand.

“That was not so long, was it?” he asked.

“Long enough,” Drake said weakly.

He helped Sharon through the door and Humai followed, closing the door softly behind him.

Drake wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and took several deep breaths of the cool air before he turned to Sharon.

“There,” he said, “you’ll feel better in a minute.”

She leaned against him, breathing slowly. Her eyes were closed and her face was ghostly white in the dim moonlight.

“I feel better already,” she murmured.

She smiled and opened her eyes slowly.

“That’s the girl,” he said cheerfully. “You just had a bit too much of that incense.” He shook his head slightly and took another deep breath. “It almost got me for a moment.”

Sharon smiled, and then her gaze moved casually from his face and past his shoulder. For an instant her features seemed to be frozen in blankness and then a dazed, stricken, incredulous expression spread over her face. Her eyes grew dark and wide with a terrible fear.

“Drake,” she gasped, and her voice was a whisper that almost died in her throat. “Drake, I’m losing my mind!”

Drake patter her shoulder.

“Ssssh,” he said gently. “You’re a little tired and nervous. You—”

“No, Drake,” Sharon cried. Her eyes did not come back to his face, but remained fixed on something over his shoulder. “Where are we? What’s happened to us?”

There was no mistaking the terrible urgency in her voice. Drake turned and the sight that met his eyes left him weak and breathless.

Chapter II

They were standing at the edge of a garden — a garden that stretched hundreds of feet before them; and beyond the garden the towering spires and minarets of a dazzlingly weird city were visible in the pale, ghostly moonlight.

The familiar scenes of Washington were gone. Capitol dome, Washington monument, all the majestic avenues of great buildings had disappeared completely. In their place, sprawling before Drake’s stunned gaze, was a grotesque city of startling architecture and crazy-quilt design.

It was incredible!

Drake shook his head groggily and passed a hand over his eyes. This must be some sort of mirage, some optical illusion or distortion. But when he looked again nothing had changed. The great white city of weird arches, mosques and towers still glistened in the moonlight, sprawling as far as his eyes could reach.

Sharon gripped his arm tightly.

“Am I going crazy, Drake?” she asked. Her voice was dazed, weak.

“Maybe we both are,” Drake said grimly. He turned suddenly on Humai, the bland, round-faced little man who had led them to this place. He was watching them with a pleasant smile on his pale face.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded, waving a hand helplessly toward the vast gleaming city.

Humai appeared politely perplexed.

“I am afraid I don’t quite understand,” he said, looking from Drake to Sharon with puzzled eyes.

“What’s this city?” Drake asked. “Is it some kind of an optical illusion?” He glared angrily and helplessly at the bland little man. “Don’t tell me you can’t see it,” he snapped heatedly.

“But of course I can see it,” Humai murmured. He smiled again and his eyes almost disappeared in soft folds of flesh. “It’s a very lovely city, isn’t it? I’m sure you will learn to enjoy its many attractions.”

“What do you mean?” Drake demanded.

Humai then shrugged his soft round shoulders and squinted comically at Drake.

“Allow me,” he murmured, “to welcome you in the name of the Caliph Zinidad to his royal palace. I am sure the Caliph will wish to express his welcome personally in the near future. Particularly,” Humai said, smiling directly at Sharon, “will he wish to — ah — welcome the charming young lady.”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking?” Drake snapped. “Who is this Zinidad you’re babbling about?”

“Zinidad,” Humai said, “is the Caliph of Bagdad. A most charming person — ah — under certain circumstances.”

Drake stepped closer to Humai, his hands knotting into capable looking fists.

“Listen, my fat friend,” he said. “I’m just about out of patience. I’m tired of listening to your attempts at comedy. If you can explain what in the name of Heaven has happened, do so, but stop chattering about the Caliph of Bagdad.”

“But he is a most important person,” Humai said, smiling. He shrugged and stepped back a pace, dropping his hand to the handle of the door that had opened to the garden. “But since you do not beliefs me,” he said mildly, “I will say no more.”

Drake automatically glanced at the door and when he did he received another shock. The door was of massive construction and, even in the pale moonlight he could see that its surface was ornately gilded with a substance that gleamed like gold. It reached dozens of feet above him and was topped by a wide arch whose wings reached fully thirty feet on either side of its apex.

Sharon was staring at the monstrous door with amazed, stunned eyes. “Drake,” she cried. “Look!”

She pointed to the immense palace whose turrets and ramparts were visible beyond the great arched gate. The palace was a sprawling mass of weird architecture with odd wings and abutments seemingly thrown in without design or any attempt at order or unity. Ghostly moonlight shone on the alabaster walls of the palace transforming it to a shimmering creation of strange beauty. Windows gaped from the white walls like dark, unfriendly eyes.

“You are gazing upon the palace of the Caliph,” Humai said. “I hope you find it pleasing, for you will be seeing it many times in the years to come.”

As he finished speaking he tapped lightly on the great door. Almost instantly it began to swing open, ponderously, slowly.

“You will come with me,” Humai said gently.

“I’ll be damned if we will,” Drake said grimly.

“I am afraid I must insist,” Humai said.

“Go to hell,” Drake said calmly. “I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but I don’t like it. We’re staying right here until we find out what this thing is all about.”

Humai sighed gently, almost sadly.

“As you wish,” he murmured.

He clapped his hands together and the immense gate swung back rapidly; a splash of light fell across them from within. Heavy footsteps were heard.

Sharon moved close to Drake.

“What is it?” she whispered. “I’m frightened, Drake.”

He put his arm about her slim shoulders and drew her to his side.

“Don’t worry, honey,” he said.

When the gate had swung open they were facing a wide, high arched corridor; and down this corridor, coming toward them at a purposeful march, was a company of brawny, half-clad soldiers. The advancing group of men wore loose trousers and gaudy sashes into which were stuck gleaming, curved scimitars. In their hands were torches that cast an eerie guttering illumination against the burnished wall of the great hallway.

Sharon shrank against Drake as the company came to a halt before Humai. The soldiers — eight in number — were giants, almost eight feet in height, with great deep chests and Herculean shoulders. Muscles rippled like sinewy ropes beneath their smooth black hides.

One of the company bowed to Humai and murmured something inaudible to Drake. The rest of the great creatures stood in attitudes of submissive attention. It was an incongruous spectacle; the huge soldiers standing like great dumb animals before the small figure of Humai, waiting motionlessly for his orders.

Humai turned from the leader of the guards to Drake, still smiling agreeably.

“These soldiers are part of the personal bodyguard of the Caliph. They will escort you to him now.” He waggled his round head seriously. “I advise you to go quietly.”

Drake shoved Sharon behind him and stepped forward, his knees bent slightly, his hands clenched.

Humai murmured something under his breath to the great black who stood beside him and the creature started for Drake. Drake feinted to one side, palling the black off balance, then he lunged for Humai. He wanted to get his hands on the little man’s throat — for just a few seconds!

But the black was faster than his great bulk indicated. He wheeled like a panther and his huge arm whipped out, catching Drake about the waist.

He felt his feet leave the floor as the black jerked him into the air and held him there struggling helplessly.

Another of the guards caught Sharon’s arms behind her back. She fought wildly, but he held her as if she were a child, his big round face stonily impassive.

Humai clucked his tongue and regarded Drake solemnly.

“You see?” he said, shrugging. “You wouldn’t listen to me.”

Drake stopped fighting against the inexorable grip of the giant black. His captor then set him down but his great hands still pinioned Drake’s arms.

Humai spoke to the soldiers again and they came to attention, formed two columns and marched down the corridor, carrying Drake and Sharon along as if they were two dolls.

Humai followed, his eyes twinkling in the round, white expanse of his face.

The trip was like a nightmarish kaleidoscope to Drake. Their giant captors escorted them down the wide, high corridor, through vast palatial rooms that were adorned with golden statues and intricate fountains which threw lacy sprays of scented water high into the air, into other seemingly endless corridors and at last brought them to a stop before a mighty golden door, flanked on either side by gaudily uniformed sentries.

Humai spoke in a low voice to the sentries and one of them stepped forward and swung back the great golden door. The giant black guards moved forward again and Drake and Sharon were led into a huge, brilliantly lighted room with a vast domed ceiling.

The walls were dyed a deep crimson but the floor was of purest marble, white as a summer cloud and shot through with streaks of blue that were like delicate veins.

Within the room, reclining on silken couches, were dozens of richly clad men smoking from long ivory-stemmed pipes and drinking from glasses containing a dark liquid that filled the incense-laden air with spicy fragrance.

The black guards marched steadily toward the center of this magnificent room, glancing neither to the right nor the left.

In the middle of the vast hall was a raised dais; a throne of gleaming gold, jewel-encrusted and topped by a brilliant canopy of figured silk. On either side of the throne slim black boys stood waving great feathered fans that stirred the heavy languorous air with a sluggish motion. Steps covered with soft, luxurious carpets led to the dais, and on one of these steps were several slim girls, clad only in soft curled slippers and wisps of silk buckled about their white waists, lying in poses of voluptuous abandonment.

The giant black guards separated into two columns when they reached this throne and Drake and Sharon were suddenly face to face with the occupant of the dais — a great, bloated creature with sagging soft jowls and sprawling limbs, a man who stared at them sleepily with hard little eyes and breathed noisily through his loose pink lips. He lay rather than sat on the great cushioned dais, his legs sprawled loosely, his short pudgy arms resting carelessly on the rounded arms of the throne.

Humai stepped forward and bowed low.

“I have done my best to fulfill your wish, O mighty Caliph,” he said. “You alone can judge whether this lowly servant has succeeded.”

The gross creature on the throne waved a limp hand negligently at Humai in a weary gesture of dismissal, and the plump little man retreated several steps. The Caliph studied Drake for an instant with sharp little eyes; a slow frown creased his forehead.

“Who is this creature?” he asked. His voice was soft and throaty.

Humai stepped forward again, bowing submissively.

“I was forced to bring him with me, illustrious Caliph,” he murmured.

“I did not want a man,” the Caliph said, waving his limp hand in a feeble gesture of irritation. “I asked you to find me a woman, a beautiful woman.”

“And I did, O glorious Caliph,” Humai said. “Look on her; fair as the morning when the sun’s rays break over the purple mountain; as mysterious as the shrouded night when the stars hurl their shafts of light at the surging waters; as passionate as Love, itself. This is the woman I have brought to you, O exalted Caliph. This fairest flower of the future I brought to you to grace your own gardens forever.”

The Caliph belched sleepily and turned his eyes to Sharon. She felt herself blushing as his sharp gaze moved over her slim body. A slow smile touched his sensual lips as he finally raised his eyes to Sharon’s face. He studied her pale cheeks, crimsoned now with shame and anger, surveyed her flashing green eyes and red hair carefully and impersonally, as if she were an inanimate object he was considering buying.

“You have done well, Wizard,” he said at last, to Humai.

“My grateful thanks are yours, O immeasurable Caliph,” Humai said humbly. “May I die the instant I displease you.”

“Have no fear,” the Caliph said, absently scratching his great belly, “you will.”

He turned his bright gaze again to Drake.

“Why did you bring this creature?” he asked.

“He was her companion,” Humai said. “When I transported her through the realm of Time he had his arm about her waist and thus was transported also.”

The Caliph frowned.

“I do not like the thought of his arm about her waist,” he said. “She is mine. She should have been keeping herself for me. You should have brought me a virgin, Wizard. You know my preferences.”

“Just a minute,” Sharon said angrily. “If you’re implying that I’m not—”

“Silence, woman,” the Caliph said softly. “You would not look well with your tongue torn out by its roots.”

“I won’t keep quiet,” Sharon cried. “You’re not going to talk about me as if I’m a loose woman and get away with it. And you’re not going to talk about me like a piece of furniture. If you’ve got something to say to me, I’m standing right here and I’ve got two ears.”

“Don’t boast of such things,” the Caliph said, “or you may lose them.” He turned to Humai and rubbed his lips petulantly. “I did not want a chattering jay,” he said fretfully. “I could do with a little less beauty and a little more silence.”

Humai looked pale and distressed.

“I am so sorry, O mighty Caliph,” he said miserably, “but there was no manner in which to determine that beforehand.”

“If you’ll pardon me,” Drake said drily. “I’d like to ask you just what your object was in having us brought here. I am an accredited attaché of the United States diplomatic corps and, as such, I demand the right of being heard.”

The Caliph put his plump hands to the sides of his head and rocked back and forth on the dais.

“Why does everyone want to talk?” he wailed. “I will go deaf with the noise.” He took his hands down and gestured sharply to two of the giant blacks. “Take this noisy creature to a dungeon, the deepest one you can find, and lock him up there. Tomorrow I will have his tongue cut out.”

Drake felt huge hands on his arms almost instantly. He struggled with all his strength but it was a futile effort. Sharon ran to his side and clung to him, until another of the blacks pulled her away and held her firmly.

“Oh, darling,” she cried, fighting against the powerful grip of the giant black. “Make them kill us both. I don’t want to live without you. Please—”

That was the last Drake heard. He was dragged through a side door of the great throne-room and it slammed behind him with a crash, shutting out the last piteous sound of Sharon’s voice.

Chapter III

Drake was dragged from the room, the Caliph frowned at Sharon’s sobbing figure, held helplessly in the grasp of the giant black guard.

“Take her to my harem attendants,” he said, with a weary shake of his head. “Have her prepared for me. I wish to see her again tonight.” He frowned darkly at Humai. “I am not pleased, miserable Wizard. There is too much noise and crying. If I remain displeased after tonight, I shall wish to see you again.”

“Yes, O glorious Caliph,” Humai muttered. With a forlorn bow he retreated from the throne.

Two of the black guards led Sharon from the great throne room and down several long winding corridors until they reached a large door guarded by a company of the Nubian giants. The door opened, Sharon was ushered into the room beyond, and the door closed with a dry, final click.

She looked around and saw that she was in a well-lighted room, much smaller than the one in which the Caliph had his throne. There were comfortable divans about the walls and in the air was the heady scent of fragrant perfumes.

A door on the side opened and two women, dressed in plain, knee-length cloaks, entered. One of them spoke sharply to the black guards and they withdrew with submissive bows.

“You must come with us,” one of the women said to Sharon. She was a middle-aged woman with fine, delicate features and gleaming black hair faintly streaked with grey. “My name is Tana,” she added. “I am in charge of the Caliph’s harem. We must prepare you for tonight and there is not much time. Will you come along, please?” Sharon realized that no point would be gained by resistance. She followed the women through a connecting corridor of pale marble to a room with couches against one wall and several padded tables in the center. At one end of the room was a sunken tub of black marble which was filled with clear, faintly scented water. There were mirrors on all walls, and an elaborate marble table near one wall was covered with pots of pastes and creams and long tubes of colored wax and rouge.

The room was furnished so exquisitely that Sharon couldn’t help admiring the details of the appointments.

A door opened and three plainly dressed young girls entered.

“They will bathe you,” Tana said. “When you are ready I will come and see that no detail has been overlooked.” She inspected Sharon with a critical, experienced eye. “You will do,” she murmured. “For one night you will be completely satisfactory, I am sure.”

“Why only one night?”

Tana smiled sadly. “You will soon know,” she said. With an impulsive gesture she patted Sharon’s cheek shyly. “And you are so young,” she murmured, turning away.

When she had gone, the three maidens went to work on Sharon. In spite of her protests they disrobed her, bathed her with soft fleecy cloths, massaged her body with pungent, vitalizing oils, lacquered her nails and completed the job of anointing her with subtle perfumes and threading a wreath of fresh flowers into her waving, shoulder-length hair.

The three girls chattered among themselves as they brought clothes to her — rich, clinging silk robes that buckled with a diamond clasp at the waist and fell in billowing folds to the floor.

One of them knelt and fitted small jeweled slippers on her feet and they all stood back like artisans examining their work and stared at her with proud, possessive admiration.

“Please, girls,” Sharon said, “I appreciate all this, but I’d much rather have a little information. What did Tana mean by saying I’d do for one night? She acted as if I were going to be killed tomorrow.”

“But you are,” one of the girl giggled. “Surely you know that.”

Sharon felt a chill tremor run down her spine.

“What do you mean?” she cried. She shook her head distractedly, as the three girls continued to regard her with curious eyes. “I— I — can’t die now,” she said desperately. “There’s a young man. He’s in trouble. I’ve got to help him. Can’t you girls help me get out of here? Won’t you please?”

“We can do nothing,” one of the girls said. She regarded Sharon with sad, solemn eyes and turned away slowly. “You must die tomorrow. That is the custom. The Caliph, Zinidad, will spend only one night with a girl. The next day she must die so that no other man will ever again possess her. We can do nothing to help you.”

“But I’ve got to get away,” Sharon said frantically. She stood up from the couch and desperately paced the length of the room. “I just can’t die now.” The door opened and Tana entered. “You look lovely,” she murmured. “You are worthy of the great honor in store for you. You will come with me now. The Caliph is waiting your arrival with eagerness.”

“He can keep right on waiting,” Sharon said hotly. “I’m not going.”

She backed against a wall, her breasts heaving with anger. “You can tell your exalted tub of lard that he’s just out of luck. I’m not going to him and he can’t make me.”

Tana’s classic features were expressionless as she stepped to the wall and gently tapped a small gong. The clear note of the bell had hardly rippled away to silence before the door opened and two giant blacks appeared. Their huge faces were without expression as they regarded Tana.

She indicated Sharon with a nod of her head.

“Take her to the Caliph’s private quarters. He is awaiting her,” she murmured.

The blacks inclined their heads submissively and then moved toward Sharon. The girl backed away, her small fists clenched desperately.

The blacks moved stolidly toward her and she suddenly realized the futility of resistance. Her shoulders slumped wearily and she leaned tiredly against the wall.

“What’s the use,” she said bitterly and walked toward the giant Nubians.

Their faces were expressionless as they took her arms in their great hands and led her from the room...

The Caliph’s private boudoir was a magnificent affair, discreetly illuminated by scented candles, perfumed by pots of fragrant incense and dominated by a vast circular bed covered with soft shimmering silk and adorned by the fat, sprawling figure of the Caliph.

Sharon was led across the rug-draped, shining marble floor to the side of the great bed. They released her arms then, bowed ceremoniously to the Caliph and backed from the room, making low obeisances every few feet.

The door closed behind them, and Sharon heard a bolt sliding into place with a sound of finality.

The Caliph opened his little eyes and peered at her. He was attired in a loose white cloak that looked like a Roman toga; and his face seemed almost lost in folds of flesh as he smiled slowly and sensually at her.

“Come to me, my child,” he said. Sharon crossed her arms. Her small jaw was set.

“I will not,” she said distinctly.

The Caliph looked at her in injured surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” Sharon said firmly. “I was brought here by force, against my will. This is far as I go. If you try anything I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

The Caliph squirmed slightly. His fat, moon-like face wore an almost comic expression of bewilderment.

“You must not talk that way,” he said, “Remember I am the Caliph. My words are law.”

“Not with me they aren’t,” Sharon said grimly.

The Caliph heaved himself laboriously up on one elbow and regarded her with petulant surprise.

“May Allah protect us,” he sighed, “from disobedient women.”

“You’re just too accustomed to having your own way,” Sharon said. “Who gave you the right to order women around as if they were slaves?”

“But,” the Caliph said, genuinely astonished, “what else are they?”

Sharon stamped her small foot in exasperation. She was becoming increasingly annoyed with the dictatorial old lecher.

“You’re just like all men,” she said hotly. “You think because you are women’s physical superior that it gives you a divine right to dominate them mentally and spiritually. A woman is the equal of any man, anywhere, anytime. In fact they have more brains and skill than the average man. Where I came from women have fought for their rights and have proven themselves in all fields to be the equal of any male.”

The Caliph shook his head ominously.

“Those are dangerous words,” he said. What would happen to civilization if all women began thinking as you do?”

“What have men done by themselves,” Sharon said, “other than wage wars and establish elaborate harem systems?”

Zinidad scratched his round head moodily.

“What have women done in this place you come from? Have they improved things?”

“Well,” Sharon said, hesitating, “they haven’t gotten everything straightened out yet, but they’re on the right trail. We still have wars; but,” she added defensively, “even in war women are proving themselves the equal of man. They can fly planes as well as any man.”

“Fly planes?” Zinidad said wonderingly. “What are planes?”

“One of the inventions of my land,” Sharon explained, “is a machine that flies through the air, miles above the ground, faster than any bird. It has revolutionized commerce, warfare and civilization.”

Zinidad laughed delightedly.

“What a sport that must be,” he cried. “Tell me more about these marvelous things.” He smiled and wagged a plump finger playfully. “I know there is no truth in what you speak, but it amuses me to hear you tell of such wonderful things.” He patted the edge of his silken bed. “Sit here beside me and tell me more of these fables.”

Sharon sat down gingerly. She hoped that she had gotten the Caliph’s mind off his original intentions, but she was ready to move quickly if she were wrong.

She sighed with relief when the Caliph lay back and closed his eyes, a peaceful smile on his face. “Tell me your fables,” he murmured.

“All right,” Sharon said...

She talked for almost an hour, telling the Caliph of the world of the future, until finally she noticed that his eyes had closed and his breathing had become heavy and regular. Sharon stopped speaking and watched the slumbering figure. Finally the Caliph began to snore, loudly and rythmically.

“Just like a man,” Sharon thought disgustedly.

She realized then that she was tired. She thought of Drake but she knew there was nothing she could do to help him until the following day. She rose softly from the bed, careful not to disturb the Caliph and lay down on one of the thick, soft skins that decorated the marble floor. The room was warm and the heavy skin was luxuriously comfortable under her tired body.

She kicked off her slippers and in a few seconds was soundly asleep.

Chapter IV

Drake had been led from the presence of the Caliph by the giant black guards to a dark, dank dungeon in the bowels of the palace and left there, locked in a miserable cell, five feet by five without illumination or ventilation of any sort.

When he heard the ponderous footsteps of the guards departing, fading away into silence, he made a groping inspection of his quarters. There was a tiny trickle of running water in one corner that fell into a small open drain; and against the opposite wall a bundle of cold dirty rags was evidently a comfortless substitute for a cot.

He tried the door, but it was locked securely. He sat down then on the bundle of rags, turned his collar up about his neck against the damp chill of the place and settled down to await developments.

They were not long in coming.

Hardly fifteen minutes had passed before he heard footsteps in the corridor and saw an edge of light under the door. A key clicked against metal and the door swung open; Humai, the plump Wizard, stood in the doorway, holding a lamp above his head.

“Greetings,” he murmured. “May I come in?”

Drake got to his feet.

“Make yourself at home,” he said sarcastically. “Take any chair you like. Would you care for a drink? Something to eat?”

“You mustn’t be bitter, my friend,” Humai, said suavely. He stepped into the small cell and carefully closed the door behind him.

“Where is Sharon?” Drake demanded. “What are they going to do to her?”

Humai shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Tonight she will spend with Zinidad, but after that—” He turned his palms out and shrugged again. “Who knows?”

Drake clenched his fists and stared helplessly at the heavy door and thick walls of his cell.

“Isn’t there something I can do to help her?” he asked.

“We may all need help before long,” Humai murmured. “You are scheduled for the water torture tomorrow. And if our Caliph’s disposition doesn’t improve very shortly he will also want to remove my venerable head.”

“Possibly,” Drake suggested, “we can work together.”

Humai smiled. “I was thinking of something like that. I brought you two here to please the Caliph, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. After all my experiments and labors I have failed to please Zinidad. And in Bagdad that is fatal.”

In spite of the desperate plight he was in, Drake couldn’t suppress his curiosity in regard Humai’s miraculous ability to pierce the planes of time and space.

“Just how did you work it?” he asked. “Time travel has been experimented with in the twentieth century but no one ever got beyond the theoretical stage.”

“It was simple enough,” Humai said. He smiled, his little eyes twinkling. “And I had a very powerful compulsion to stimulate me. The Caliph wished for women of the past and future and I was ordered to provide them for him. I worked for several years on my device and his patience was wearing very thin. If I hadn’t succeeded on my last attempt it is doubtful that I would ever have gotten another chance.”

“Were we the first to be honored with your attentions?” Drake asked drily.

Humai nodded.

“I chose the year nineteen-forty-three at random. But I made a miscalculation on my first attempt and landed in the year of nineteen-forty-four. I stayed just long enough to find out roughly what was going on before coming back to nineteen-forty-three.”

Humai’s words caused a sudden quiver of excitement to race through Drake’s veins.

“You were actually ‘in’ nineteen-forty-three?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Humai.

Drake seized him by both arms.

“Can you tell me of anything you saw?” he asked.

Humai frowned and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“I didn’t pay much attention,” he said, “I listened to scraps of conversation, drifting here and there, but I wasn’t awfully concerned about what was going on.”

“You must remember something,” Drake insisted.

“Oh, yes,” Humai said, “I remember several things. For one, everyone was talking about a place called Dakar.”

“Yes,” Drake prompted anxiously, “what were they saying about Dakar?” Humai squinted at the ceiling and frowned.

“They were saying something about an attack being launched from there toward a place called Brazil.”

Drake snapped his fingers suddenly. “Of course, of course,” he said tensely. “Do you remember anything else?

Humai thought for a moment and then shook his round head deliberately.

“No,” said he decisively. “That was all the people were talking about. Everyone seemed quite concerned about it.”

“Had the attack succeeded?” Drake asked quickly.

“Oh, yes,” Humai said. “I gathered that it had been quite a thorough success. That was why everyone was so concerned. It seems they hadn’t expected anything like that.”

“Of course they hadn’t!” Drake said bitterly. “What stupid fools we were.” He began to pace the narrow cell, his clenched hands jammed into his pockets. Humai’s news had shocked him from the thought of his own predicament.

The Germans had struck — or would strike in ’44 — at South America from Dakar. And that attack was going to succeed unless something could be done to warn the Allied leaders of its impending threat.

He wheeled suddenly on Humai. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said fiercely. “I’ve got to get back to my own time.”

“I’m afraid that is quite impossible,” Humai said. “The time device has not been prepared for another trip as yet; and that is liable to take quite some time.”

“How long?” Drake demanded.

“I don’t really know,” Humai said. “But,” he added, smiling gently, “only one person at a time can make the trip. And if the Caliph’s present unfriendly attitude toward me continues, I know who that one person is going to be. I will have to use the time device to save myself from his wrath. That may be my only possibility of escaping.”

“But you don’t understand,” Drake cried. “It’s absolutely imperative that I get back. Or, if only one can go, send the girl back. I’ll stay here — gladly. But one of us has to get back with the information you’ve given me.”

Humai chuckled softly.

“It is useless to talk,” he murmured.

The cell door behind him suddenly swung slowly open. Humai stopped in mid-sentence when he heard the creak of the hinges. He turned slowly to the door, his face bland, impassive, unrevealing.

Drake was staring at the woman who stood in the doorway. She was tall, with fine skin and dark smouldering eyes. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, except for a spot at each temple that looked as if it had been brushed lightly with silver dust. She wore a crimson robe that buckled at her throat with a huge diamond clasp and fell in straight, classic folds to the ground. The points of her small golden slippers were visible under the hem of her cloak.

Humai inclined his head slightly toward the woman.

“It is indeed a surprise to see you here, O beautiful Tana.”

Tana regarded him calmly but there was a faint enigmatic smile at the corners of her curving mouth.

“I, too, am surprised,” she murmured. “I had hoped to talk to the prisoner alone. It is a pity that you must leave so soon, my dear Humai.”

“Some things cannot be helped,” Humai sighed. He turned and smiled softly at Drake. “I will speak to you again, my friend.”

He bowed ceremoniously to Tana and then padded from the cell, closing the door gently behind him.

Tana waited until his footsteps had faded down the corridor before turning to Drake. Her deep thoughtful eyes regarded him searchingly.

“I am Tana,” she said softly, when her inspection was completed. “I am the mistress of the Caliph’s harem. I wish to talk to you.”

“Everyone seems to have that idea tonight,” Drake said, without humor. “There’s not much I can do but listen. What is it you want?”

“I think perhaps you and I can come to an understanding,” Tana said. “I can offer you your freedom if you are willing to help me.”

Drake smiled at her.

“Every bargain has two parts,” he said. “What is it you want me to do?”

“You are hardly in a position to bargain,” Tana said.

Drake shrugged. “I think I’m in a pretty good position,” he said. “You obviously need me or you wouldn’t be here. Supposing you tell me the whole story.”

Tana hesitated momentarily. Her fine, delicate features were expressionless, but there was a wary glint in her deep eyes.

“I can’t tell you everything,” she said finally. “Years ago when I was young and had the enticements of youth to offer our Caliph, I was his favorite and confidant. When he was through with me he didn’t put me to death as was his usual custom. My influence with him was strong enough to prevent him from delivering me to his royal torturers. Instead he appointed me mistress of his harem, where I serve as the custodian and servant to his precious little creatures.” She paused and Drake noticed that her white cheeks were stained with red spots of anger. “I, Tana, who once lived like the queen of Bagdad and with whom ministers and princes vied for favor, was relegated to a position of a servant. Zinidad knew that would be worse than death for me and it has been. The humiliation and baseness of my state is as intolerable as the water torture would have been.”

“A tough break,” Drake said sympathetically, “but how does all this affect me?”

“I have never given up my dream of ruling Bagdad,” Tana continued, ignoring his interruption. “Never in the blackest moments of despair have I ceased to hope, to strive, to fight for what is my rightful position. I have made friends, powerful friends with wealth and influence, who know that ‘my knowledge of the Caliph can be valuable to them. There is much dissatisfaction in Bagdad now. The people are over-burdened with oppressive taxes; there is open grumbling in the markets and streets. The time is right for a bold stroke that will break forever the influence of Zinidad. The time has come to revolt!”

“Sounds like it might be,” Drake said, “But the only difference between a revolt and a revolution is success. Will your revolt succeed? The Caliph has armies, I presume. What of them?”

“The main battle must be won here in the castle of the Caliph,” Tana said. “Once the private guards of the Caliph are defeated and he is killed, the people will welcome a new Caliph. The army will defer to the wish of the people. Not only can a revolt succeed, it will succeed!”

“I’m still in the dark about what you want me for,” Drake said.

“I will tell you,” Tana said quietly. “Your companion from the world of the future, the beautiful red-haired girl called Sharon, is in a position to help us immensely.”

At the mention of Sharon’s name, all of Drake’s desperate anxiety returned.

“Where is she?” he demanded. “What has that pot-bellied lecher done to her?”

“Nothing,” Tana said. “That I can promise. I saw their first meeting. I observed what happened from a small hidden peep-hole which I installed for the purpose of spying on the Caliph. She talked to him for several hours, telling him stories of the strange land from which both of you came. The Caliph finally went to sleep and the girl then lay down on a rug on the floor and did likewise. I know, however, that the Caliph is not through with her. He will want to see her again, to hear more of her strange stories. Thus, for the time, she is safe and in a position close to the Caliph where she can do us much good. If,” Tana smiled slowly, “she can be persuaded to help us with our plan.”

“Ah,” Drake said, “I begin to see. That’s where I come in. I’m to persuade Sharon to help us toss the Caliph into the discard. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Tana said.

“And for that I receive my freedom?”

“Yes.”

“And Sharon?” Drake asked. “Will she also receive her freedom?”

Tana hesitated, then shrugged.

“If you wish it,” she said. “That is a matter of no concern to me. Now what do you say? Freedom for both of you if you help me. If not,” she smiled, “you may take your chances on the tender mercies of the royal torturers.”

“There’s only one answer,” Drake said. “I’m not a bit interested in your internal problems, but I do want freedom for myself and Sharon. I’ll do what I can with her. How can I arrange to see her?”

“I will arrange that,” Tana said. “She will be brought here tomorrow morning.”

“What precisely do you want her to do?” Drake asked.

“I will tell you later. First talk to her and get her promise to help. Our plans are not quite complete. My main support will come from the mighty bandit, Ali Baba, who will provide me with the men to conquer the Caliph’s guards. When we are ready to strike, I will tell you what the red-haired girl must do. That will be soon enough for her to know.”

“All right,” Drake said. “How soon will it be before I have my freedom?”

“There need be no delay about that,” Tana said. “When you have talked to the red-haired one in the morning, I will come to you, bringing you suitable clothes and arms. The guards will be easy to handle. You shall go free then and hide in the hills with Ali Baba until we are ready to strike.”

She turned and moved to the door.

“Keep silent of all I have told you,” she murmured.

She opened the door and when it closed behind her, Drake heard heavy bolts sliding into place.

Chapter V

Drake slept fitfully that night in the dank, odorous cell. There was no change in the gloomy darkness to indicate the rising of the sun and the passage of the hours. His stomach told him he had been a long time without food when he awoke, but he couldn’t tell if it were five in the morning or noon. He was not awake long before he heard steps outside his cell and then the bolts clanged back and the door opened.

Two guards entered, one of them holding a smoking lamp and the other carrying a bowl of food and a pot of warm goat’s milk which he set on the floor.

Without a look at Drake, the two huge blacks left the cell, closing and locking the door behind them. Drake was left again in the darkness. He groped his way to the food and managed to eat enough of it to satisfy his hunger. The goat milk he left untouched.

He had just finished his meal when the door opened again and the same guards entered. One of them removed the empty dish and the bowl of milk while the other motioned Drake to his feet.

Drake got up and a small, almost naked little boy pattered into the cell carrying in his hands a pot of fragrant incense. He set it down in a corner and then stepped to one side of the doorway, salaaming low, until his forehead almost brushed the floor.

The giant black came to attention on the other side of the doorway, his great dark moon of a face impassive.

Drake heard another step in the corridor, a light, quick step, and then Sharon was standing in the doorway, looking incredibly radiant in a floating white gown that was set with hundreds of lustrous, milk-white pearls.

“Darling!” he cried. He stepped toward her, but the great black put his massive hand against his chest and held him back.

“Hey, what’s the ideal?” Drake said. “I’ll get rid of them,” Sharon said. She nodded imperiously to the great black guard and to the little boy and clapped her hands. Then she pointed to the door.

The brown, little boy smiled, salaamed and ducked through the door, followed by the giant guard. When their footsteps faded Sharon closed the door and then came quickly across the floor to Drake.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered, “I’ve been so worried about you.”

Drake took her in his arms and smiled into her eyes.

“You needn’t have been,” he said. “You were the one who was in a bad spot.”

“You’ll never believe what happened,” Sharon said, “I—”

Drake nodded. “Tana told me all about your stalling the Caliph with stories of the twentieth century.”

“Tana?” Sharon said. “The harem mistress? How did you see her? And how did she know?”

“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” Drake said. “And not too much time, so listen carefully.”

As quickly as possible he told Sharon what had happened since he had been dragged from her side in Zinidad’s throne room. When he finished, her face was radiant with excitement.

“But can we trust her, Drake,” she asked worriedly. “She is guaranteeing us our freedom, but we have nothing but her word on that.”

Drake shrugged.

“Beggars can’t be choosers; we’ve got to play ball with her, or else.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sharon said. “But she didn’t say what she wanted me to do, did she?”

“No,” Drake said, “she didn’t.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep Zinidad interested in my stories,” Sharon said. “I’m afraid he’s liable to slip back into character any time. He was very pleasant this morning in a fatherly sort of way.”

“Well, it’s your job to keep him from feeling any younger than a father,” Drake said.

“I’ll try,” Sharon said. “I’ve got to be going now. You will take care of yourself, won’t you, darling?”

“You bet,” Drake said determinedly, “and you too. We’ve got to get out of this place and get back to the twentieth century. I’m not forgetting for a minute that our first job is to get the information of the Nazi attack on South America into the hands of our State Department.”

Sharon stood on tiptoes to kiss Drake goodbye, then turned and left the tiny cell. The guards in the corridor bowed to her and locked the door after she had gone.

And Drake settled down to wait...

Several hours passed before the bolts on the door were drawn again, and this time it was Tana who entered, carrying a bundle of clothes over her arm.

“Put these on as quickly as possible,” she told him. “We have drugged the guards, but they may come to any minute. I’ll keep watch in the corridor. Hurry!”

When she stepped out of the cell Drake quickly stripped off his own clothes and climbed into the ones she had brought him. He kicked off his patent leather shoes and slipped his feet into comfortable slippers of well-cured leather. Trousers and blouse went on quickly and a veiled turban completed his attire.

When he stepped into the corridor Tana handed him a belt from which a curved scimitar hung.

“Put this on,” she whispered, “you may need it.”

Three of the great black guards were stretched on the floor beside the cell, breathing heavily.

Tana glanced at them and then beckoned Drake to follow her.

“We must hurry,” she said quietly. “When the Nubian guards are discovered there will be a great outcry. We must be far from here by that time.”

Drake followed Tana for several hundred yards of the winding dark tunnels that honeycombed the bowels of the palace and led gradually up to ground level. When they reached a section of the tunnel where they could feel fresh drafts of air and see sunlight slanting in the barred apertures at the top of the corridor, Tana led him quickly to an unlocked door that opened on one of the rear courts of the palace.

Drake blinked in the strong sunlight as she threw open the door and led him outside. Two great camels were waiting a few feet from the door. A stable boy held their bridles. At a signal from Tana the boy brought the beasts to their knees and she swung herself into the saddle and motioned Drake to do likewise.

The stable boy scampered away as Tana took the reins and pulled the great beast to its feet. Drake’s camel lurched upright, with a sickening lurching motion, of its own accord.

“They are well trained,” Tana said absently. “They are from the royal stables. There is no creature of the desert that can keep up with them.”

As she spoke she threw her veil across her face and pulled her cloak tightly over her shoulders.

“You had better do the same,” she said to Drake. “I have chosen a route that will not take us through the populated sectors of the city, but we must be very careful not to be recognized.”

Drake drew the veil over his face.

“All set,” he said.

The sun was almost half way across a startlingly blue sky, beating down with heavy hot force, as their camels moved slowly from the deserted courtyard, under the great arched gate that led to the wide avenue which flanked the palace.

They rode quickly through the winding streets of Bagdad, past several jammed market places, and soon they were on the great wide road that from Bagdad to the open stretches of the desert. They followed this road for several miles, moving aside on several occasions to allow long in-coming caravans to pass, and at last they reached the desert and started out on its broad, trackless, shimmering wastes.

This much of the ride had been taken in absolute silence. Tana seemed to know exactly what she was doing and where she was going and apparently felt no need to explain her course to Drake.

When the sun was beginning to sink into the west, she pointed the camels toward a range of mountains which had been but a blue blur on the horizon when they left Bagdad, but which were now looming up as individual peaks stretching in an unbroken chain for dozens of miles.

Drake marveled at the woman’s endurance. His back was almost broken from the heavy lurching of his mount and his tongue was a piece of leather in his mouth. Particles of sand, whirled by the arid desert blasts, stung his face and neck and sifted into his clothes until he felt as if he were clothed in sheets of sanded paper.

But Tana rode on, saying nothing, looking neither to the right nor left, apparently oblivious to the merciless discomforts of the trip; and Drake clamped his lips together obstinately and resolved that he’d ride until his camel fell rather than ask for a rest.

When they reached the foot of the mountain peaks Tana led him through a narrow gorge into bewildering mazes of valleys and fissures that split the mountain into thousands of separate ridges, until he knew he was hopelessly and completely lost.

She rode on until they reached the blank face of an escarpment and Drake thought she was going to drive the camels straight into its flinty side; but a few feet from the sheer towering wall, she brought her camel to a halt.

Drake’s mount came to a stop beside hers. Drake shifted his position in the hard saddle and glanced around. They were on the floor of a shallow basin, surrounded on all sides by towering cliffs. One narrow fissure led into this small, rock-floored valley and Drake knew it would take an army searching the mountains to find the place.

“This is as far as we go,” Tana said.

Drake looked at her, perplexed.

Tana swung about and faced the blank face of the cliff.

“Open Sesame!” she called in a clear loud voice.

For an instant only the echo of her words drifted to their ears rebounding from the sheer sides of the mountain.

But then Drake heard a sudden rumbling sound as if two huge boulders were being ground together, and an instant later, a great slab of stone moved slowly away from the side of the cliff, revealing a gaping black hole, fifty feet wide and half as high.

“Come,” Tana said, “This is the cave of All Baba.”

Her camel moved ahead and Drake’s followed it into the solid darkness of the hole in the side of the cliff.

Chapter VI

When they entered the cave they turned right after few dozen feet and entered a large room, formed from the natural rock of the mountain. Torches guttered in niches in the wall, throwing a weird illumination over the great hall. The floor was covered with the tanned hides of animals.

There were a half dozen men lying about on the floor and one of them climbed to his feet as Tana slid from her mount to the floor.

He was a colorfully dressed fellow of medium height with a thin brown face and snapping black eyes. A scimitar hung from his waist and a wicked looking dagger was jammed into the sash of his trousers.

“Greetings, Tana,” he said.

“Greetings, Ali Baba,” Tana said. “I have brought you the one I spoke about.” She turned and nodded to Drake. “You may dismount. You will stay here for a while, until things are ready and we need you.”

Drake slid gratefully to the ground and stretched his aching muscles.

“We need food and drink,” Tana said.

Ali Baba turned and waved a hand at one of the men lying on the animal skins.

“Mura,” he called, “prepare food for our guests. Hurry!”

“I shall have to return immediately,” Tana said, “but I have news which you will like. We strike within the week. Everything has been arranged.”

Ali Baba’s thin brown face burned with cupidity. He chuckled softly, deep in his throat.

“You bring very good news,” he said. “But how are my men and I to get into the castle?”

Tana smiled softly.

“You will be delivered to the Caliph’s door, my gentle Ali Baba. I have contacted an oil dealer who has a contract to deliver forty casks of olive oil to the palace next week. The casks are huge and each could easily hold a man. Do you understand?”

“Ah!” Ali Baba murmured. He inclined his head toward Tana, his eyes sharp and bright. “I bow to your cleverness, Tana. But are you sure that forty men and myself will be sufficient to subdue the palace guards of the Caliph?”

“You have my assurance for that,” Tana said.

After they had eaten a coarse, but satisfying, meal in the vast, smoky dining-hall, Tana mounted her camel and, after a last word with Ali Baba, left for the return trip to Bagdad.

Drake was filled with a growing wonder as he contemplated the weird fate that had befallen him. And no small part of his wonder was a result of his meeting with Ali Baba, the thief, in this rocky hidden cavern. He had always believed Ali Baba to have been a completely mythical character from the pages of the Arabian Nights; and it was a shock to discover that the man had actually existed.

When Tana had gone Ali Baba asked him if he would like to rest. “Sounds like a good idea,” Drake said. “I’m pretty tired from the trip.

But I notice it didn’t seem to bother Tana particularly.”

Ali Baba smiled, but there was an uneasy glint in his eye that puzzled Drake.

“That woman,” he said, “is like a creature of rock. Her heart is like a piece of tough leather.” He shook his head slowly. “I would not like to have her for my enemy.”

“The same thought has occurred to me,” Drake said drily.

Ali Baba looked at him moodily.

“I hope I never have to fight against her,” he said. “She is like a tigress when aroused.”

“There’s no need to worry,” Drake said. “She needs you as much as you need her. She can’t afford to have you turn against her.”

“I hope you are right,” Ali Baba said. He frowned dubiously and regarded Drake with his sharp brown eyes. “I like you,” he said unexpectedly. “You speak words of good sense. Would you be interested in inspecting my little domain?”

“Very much,” Drake said.

Ali Baba led him from the dining-hall through the rest of the series of connecting caves, explaining as they went what each section was used for. There were sleeping rooms, stalls for camels and horses, workshops where harnesses and weapons were repaired, and several vast storerooms stocked with dried foods, casks of wine and shelves of clothing and equipment of all types and sorts.

“You see,” Ali Baba explained, “we must be self-sufficient. Frequently when the Caliph’s soldiers are searching the mountains for us, we must hide here in our caves for weeks at a time before it is safe to venture forth.” They had reached the last of the caves and Ali Baba led him to a great massive stone door that was locked and bolted securely.

“I will show you something now that few have ever seen,” he said. “Possibly you have wondered about our main gate and the password ‘Sesame’ which is needed to open it?”

“Yes, I have,” Drake said. “It looked like witchcraft to me.”

“It is nothing like that,” Ali Baba smiled.

He unlocked the heavy door, swung it back and started down steps carved in the heavy rock. “Follow me,” he said.

Drake started down the steps after the bandit chieftain, moving carefully in the dark. After several winding turns he saw a flicker of illumination below that threw a dappled light on the steps beneath his feet.

Ali Baba made the last turn and stepped out on a small balcony. When Drake joined him he saw he was overlooking a vast chamber, fully as large as any of the great caves that he had seen above.

In the center of the room, a massive, heavy-spoked wheel was set on a pivot in the floor; and Drake’s hands suddenly tightened with horror as he saw that to each spoke was chained a filthy, rag-covered human being.

The dazed broken figures hung over the spokes, as lifeless as pieces of wood. Their physical degradation was appalling. Hair hung over their eyes and thin shoulders and their ribs stuck out cadaverously through their scanty, torn rag coverings.

“You see,” Ali Baba said, “there is nothing mysterious about our little secret. Watch!”

He clapped his hands together and said, “Open Sesame!”

Instantly the broken, shambling figures began to stir. Their eyes did not lift to the sound of Ali Baba’s voice, but their muscles contracted, automatically, instinctively.

They laid their weight against the spokes and gradually, ponderously, the great wheel began to turn. The shackled figures strained forward soundlessly and the only noise that broke the gruesome, unnatural silence was the scraping of their unshod feet on the stone floor. When the wheel had completed a half circle, the shackled figures stopped, like obedient horses anticipating a command from a master.

“You see?” Ali Baba said. He clapped his hands again. “Close Sesame!” he said.

The men resumed their task, straining their frail, broken figures against the spokes until the great wheel had completed its circle; then they relaxed and slumped against the spokes, lifeless, motionless, senseless — waiting until again the command of “Sesame” should penetrate their dull, fogged brains and flag their muscles into automatic response.

“What do you think?” Ali Baba asked. “Is it not clever? These husks you see on the wheel are those who sought to betray me, and who were unlucky enough to fall into my hands. After a few years on the wheel even the most independent spirit learns that revolt and resistance are useless. Gradually they adapt themselves to their task until they become as obedient horses. They have but one task; they know but one command; and they do their work well.”

“I think it’s a criminal way to treat human beings,” Drake said grimly. “A knife through the back would be more merciful.”

“Possibly,” Ali Baba shrugged, “but a dead man is of no use to anyone, not even to himself. This way these creatures are able to perform some service.”

“Yes,” Drake said, “but you could put them to work making an automatic leverage system that would open your gate just as effectively.”

Ali Baba shrugged again.

“Maybe there is something in what you say. But let us not worry about it now. For the present this system is satisfactory. Now you must rest.” Drake followed Ali Baba back to the main sections of the cavern, and was taken to a small room with a soft, skin-covered floor. He was tired and aching in every muscle but it was a long time before sleep came. He couldn’t rid his mind of the picture of the helpless, broken figures on the wheel that operated the main gate of the bandit’s cave.

Three days passed in the caverns of Ali Baba, the thief, and Drake grew increasingly impatient as hour followed hour and there was no news from Tana. He slept and ate and talked interminably with Ali Baba, but his anxiety for Sharon prevented him from relaxing. The problem of how he was to effect their escape from this time to the twentieth century with the news of the German invasion of South America was another nagging worry that never completely left him.

But on the fourth day a messenger arrived, and soon after Ali Baba sought Drake out, his sharp brown eyes snapping with excitement.

“The period of waiting is over,” he announced. “Tana has sent us word that everything is prepared for us. We will leave within the hour for Bagdad. Tonight we make our entrance into the palace of the Caliph.”

“It’s about time,” Drake said.

“The wise man is patient,” Ali Baba said quietly. “We have waited long but our time to strike has come.”

“I hope Tana has everything set,” Drake said. “Supposing the guards of the Caliph are more powerful than we expect? What then?”

“The future is in the hands of Allah,” Ali Baba said philosophically. “If we fail, we shall have no more worries at all after a while. The Caliph, Zinidad, will see to that. But enough of this talk. The time is here for action. Prepare yourself to ride, my comrade. The wealth of Bagdad awaits us.”

Chapter VII

The moon was a pale thin crescent hanging against the velvet blackness of the night sky when the long line of tired, laden camels reached the great gates of the Caliph’s palace.

The custodian of the gale signalled the wall guards and then advanced to meet the leader of the caravan.

“Who is it disturbs the sleep of the Caliph’s palace in the middle of the night?” he challenged.

“It is Raschid, the merchant,” the leader of the caravan, a gnarled, stooped little man, answered sullenly. “Open the gate, uncivil dog! I have forty barrels of oil for the Caliph’s storehouses.”

“Who told you to bring them at this hour?” the custodian demanded. “The palace is asleep. Come back with the honest sun tomorrow and I will open the gate for you.”

“The Mistress Tana directed me to bring them at this hour,” Raschid said stubbornly. “If I leave now you will be answering her questions on the rack tomorrow.”

The custodian fumbled with his beard for a moment and then angrily ordered the gate-keeper to open the barrier.

“Let this be on your head,” he bellowed to Raschid.

“Stop your braying, brother of the swine,” Raschid shouted. “Stand aside and let honest men work.”

He turned and shouted an order to his camel drivers and soon the long caravan of lumbering beasts was filing into the dark courtyard of the Caliph’s palace.

Drake had heard the entire conversation, and when he felt the camels begin to move he breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was working according to plan.

He was crouched in one of the huge leather oil barrels that swung from the sides of the camels. And in each of the remaining barrels was one of Ali Baba’s men, thoroughly armed and ready to spring into action at an instant’s notice.

The camel train moved slowly across the court and the only sound in the blackness of the night was the solid scraping slump of the camels’ hoofs on the hard-packed dirt floor of the court yard.

Finally the camels came to a sluggish stop and the caravan attendants began unloading the oil barrels and carrying them into the Caliph’s store house.

Drake felt the barrels in which he was concealed being lifted and carried into the dark storeroom. The attendants grunted with every step and sighed relievedly when they set the barrel down on the floor.

The half dozen attendants repeated this procedure until all the barrels were delivered, then they mounted their camels and left the palace.

The doors of the storeroom were closed by the Caliph’s men, and Drake felt the darkness and silence close over him with an almost physical weight.

For several moments he heard nothing and then Ali Baba’s voice — a soft whisper from the adjoining barrel — reached his ears.

“Drake?”

“Yes?”

“All is going well. We must wait here until Tana sends her messenger for us.”

“How long will that be?”

“Allah knows, my friend. We can but wait.”

Minutes passed slowly. The air was close and stifling. Suddenly he heard the sound of a door opening slowly. An instant later, the whisper of stealthy movements came to his ears. And he heard the ominous clink of arms.

Puzzled and alarmed, he raised himself until he could peer over the top of the barrel. Through the murky darkness he saw a group of men moving toward the line of oil barrels. He could vaguely make out the huge shapes of Nubian guards; and he saw the gleam of their scimitars as they advanced with cat-like tread.

Drake felt a beaded rim of sweat break on his forehead. This certainly wasn’t according to plan. These advancing Nubians hardly looked like messengers from Tana.

“Ali Baba!” he hissed.

“What is it?” Ali Baba whispered.

“Take a peek over the top. I think we’re in for trouble.”

Dimly he saw Ali Baba’s head emerge from the top of the barrel and he heard the sudden, sharp intake of his breath.

“Allah aid us! We have been betrayed!”

Ali Baba’s hoarse whisper sent a chill racing down Drake’s spine.

The next instant Ali Baba sprang from the barrel, gleaming sword in hand.

“Arise, my men!” he shouted. “We have been tricked. The Caliph’s guards are here. Slay the great brutes. Arise, men, and fight!”

There were astounded shouts from Ali Baba’s men and a great roar from the Nubians as they rushed forward, swinging their great scimitars with vicious, destructive strokes.

Drake leaped from his barrel and was almost decapitated on the spot by the swishing stroke of a gleaming blade. He ducked low and the knife cut air with a vicious screech, not an inch above his head.

He drove his knee into the groin of the huge black and heard the man gasp in pain. Still crouched, he smashed two hard blows into the black’s stomach that were backed with every atom of his weight and strength.

The giant fell backward, crying out in a stricken voice and sobbing for breath. His great blade dropped to the floor with a clatter.

A hand grasped his arm and Ali Baba’s voice was in his ear.

“Come with me. It is useless to stay and fight. We have not a chance.”

Drake glanced quickly down the line of fighting, struggling men and he saw that what Ali Baba said was true. Most of his men had been caught without a chance. Before they could climb from the barrels and free their arms, the giant blacks were upon them, slaying them mercilessly with their slashing scimitars. Those who had managed to get out of the barrels were being helplessly forced backward by the superior weight and numbers of their giant adversaries.

A black entered from a doorway carrying a huge flaming torch, and instantly the wild scene was bathed with flickering, ghostly illumination.

And by that illumination Drake saw Tana enter and regard the massacre with cold hard eyes. She wore a great crimson cloak and with her white cruel face, fathomless eyes and gleaming black hair, thrown into relief by the flaming torch, she looked like the wife of Satan.

She stood in the doorway, a slim, cold, unmoved figure, watching the savage carnage with a hard, mocking smile on her face, and a flicker of ironic amusement in her deep eyes.

And Drake knew then who the traitor had been; but he didn’t know why this cold terrible woman had betrayed them.

Ali Baba tugged at his arm again.

“Follow me!” he cried. “It is death to stay.”

Drake needed no more urging.

He darted after Ali Baba toward another door. He heard Tana’s cold voice rise over the tumult, and a glance over his shoulder showed two of the blacks charging after them, eating the ground with their giant strides.

Ali Baba tugged frantically at the door.

“It is stuck!” he gasped. “Allah save us! We are lost.”

“Keep trying,” Drake snapped. He wheeled to face the three charging giants. He knew he would stand no chance of saving himself from death, but even a second’s delay might give Ali Baba a chance.

He ducked the first savage blow of the leading giant and dove at the man’s legs. His hip struck the black’s knees squarely and the huge creature sprawled forward, his own momentum and weight smashing him to the floor with bone-shattering force. The second guard tried to check his speed and, failing, sprawled over the prostrate form of his companion.

Drake was numb from the waist down because of the terrific impact. He tried to crawl to his feet, but before he could even get to his knees, the blacks had regained their feet with the agility of great cats and were upon him — bearing him to the floor under their weight.

They seized his wrists and jerked him to his feet. He didn’t bother to struggle. In their terrible hands he was helpless as a baby.

One of the blacks raised his fist and brought it down against his temple and all sound and light faded from his brain into a morass of blackness...

Chapter VIII

When Drake felt consciousness filtering back to him he was first conscious of a terrible ache in his head, and then a dragging bumping sensation as if he were being hauled between two horses over a bumpy road.

He opened his eyes and when he was able to focus them he realized that he was in the grip of the two Nubians who had captured him and was being dragged across the rough floor of the storeroom.

The blacks carried him through an open door, across the drafty black courtyard, and finally, after an interminable trip through the mazes of the palace they halted at the great golden doors which he remembered led to the Caliph’s throne room.

The gates were swung back and the guards started forward again, dragging him unceremoniously across the luxurious marble floor of the throne room and finally releasing him before the great throne of Zinidad. Drake almost collapsed when they took their hands from him, but he forced himself to straighten and stand erect before the throne.

Zinidad was sprawled on his great silken pillow, regarding him with wrathful expectancy. At his side stood Tana, tall, proud, cold, her white face as devoid of emotion as a marble statue.

“Drake!” a soft, anxious voice beside him said. “Are you all right? Look at me, please!”

Drake turned his aching head with an effort. Sharon was standing at one side, several feet away. He noticed dully that her arms were bound behind her back. She wore a long, flowing white gown buckled at her waist, and her hair fell to her bare shoulders in disarray. Her face and eyes were anxious.

“Please,” she said again, “are you all right, darling?”

“I guess so,” Drake muttered. He shook his head and some of the cobwebs disappeared. “I feel all right.”

“That is fine.” Zinidad interrupted their conversation with a soft chuckle. “I am very glad you are feeling all right. I am glad both of you feel all right, because in a little while you will not be feeling so good. You will know then how unwise it is to cross the kind Caliph, Zinidad.” He turned and smiled affectionately at Tana. “If it had not been for my little Tana your clever plot might have succeeded. But Tana is loyal; Tana is grateful for the many things I have done for her. And I will not forget this new evidence of her loyalty.”

Tana inclined her head slowly.

“I am happy serving you, O generous Caliph.”

Drake understood then the reason behind Tana’s betrayal. She had never intended to sponsor a genuine revolt against the Caliph. She had simply engineered one and then, by informing Zinidad of what was to happen, had earned his undying gratitude. She had sacrificed Ali Baba, his men, and Sharon and him, so that she gained again a position of influence close to the Caliph.

And it looked as if her clever, ruthless plan had succeeded completely.

Drake looked at her with blazing contempt. She returned his gaze calmly, mockingly with the merest hint of a scornful smile at the edges of her thin, curving lips.

“I am surprised at my little story teller,” Zinidad said sadly, regarding Sharon and wagging his fat head slowly. “I did not think she would join my enemies to betray me.” He pursed his soft, lecherous lips and smiled gently. “As much as it pains me, I must see that you share the same fate as the others.” He turned languidly to Drake. “And you, my clever friend, I must ask you where the thieving scoundrel Ali Baba is.”

This was the first indication Drake had that Ali Baba had escaped.

“I don’t know where he is,” he said. “We will find him wherever he is,” Zinidad murmured. “And now you two unfortunate people must pay for your crimes.” He clapped his soft hands together. “Take them to our pleasant torture chamber and make them comfortable,” he said to the guards who stepped to Drake’s side. “But,” he added, with a roguish shake of his finger, “don’t be too hasty with the procedure. We want our guests to enjoy themselves for several days.”

The guards bowed impassively, took Drake’s arms in their huge hands and led him toward the door. Sharon followed behind him, escorted by two more guards...

Drake and Sharon were led to a room deep in the bowels of the palace, which, judging from the unpleasant looking instruments and racks that adorned the place, was used as the Caliph’s private torture chamber.

They were shackled to walls, hands above their heads, facing each other about eight feet apart. The guards withdrew then, closing and locking the heavy, barred door after them.

The position was not particularly uncomfortable, but, Drake realized it would become very monotonous as the hours passed.

“This looks like the end,” he said bitterly. “We haven’t got a chance of getting out, now.” He tugged desperately, futilely, at the iron gyves that secured his wrists. “It’s no use. I don’t give a damn about myself, but thinking about you almost drives me out of my head.”

“Let’s don’t give up yet,” Sharon said. “Something may turn up yet. And stop worrying about me.” She threw her shining red hair back from her forehead with a toss of her head. “I’m not going to give them any satisfaction.”

“That’s the spirit, honey,” Drake said. He was silent a moment, thinking of Tana. “That witch!” he finally said explosively. “She certainly sold us down the river in neat style.”

“It’s too bad it happened just when it did,” Sharon said moodily. “I had the Caliph right under my thumb. He was so intrigued with the stories I told him that he was willing to do anything for me. If Tana hadn’t turned rat on us I might have talked him into letting us go.”

“Well, there’d still be the problem of getting back to our own time,” Drake said. “The wizard, Humai, controls the time machine and he was getting ready to use it himself to get away from the Caliph. I wonder if he’s gone yet.”

“No, he’s still around,” Sharon said. “I’ve seen him several times. He was very respectful to me because he knew I was the Caliph’s favorite.” She smiled ruefully. “Queen for a day, that’s me.”

The bolts on the heavy door suddenly rasped; Drake glanced warningly at Sharon.

The door swung open and Tana, tall, cold and imperious, walked into the room and faced them, her thin face hard and expressionless. The door closed behind her.

She flicked her eyes from Sharon to Drake; a mocking smile touched her lips.

“Comfortable?” she asked, amusement in her voice.

“As comfortable as possible,” Drake said, “considering the company.”

Tana glared angrily at him, her reserve shattered for an instant. She breathed hard and spots of color touched her pale cheeks.

“You won’t be quite so spirited in a few more hours,” she said harshly.

“Is that what you came here to tell us?” Drake asked sarcastically.

Tana smiled. “As a matter of fact, no. I came here again to bargain with you. You are in even a worse position now than you were on the first occasion.”

“But I have the benefit of experience,” Drake said. “I know that bargaining with you is a profitless business. Whatever the deal, the answer is no.”

“A pity,” Tana said calmly. “I was prepared to help, not you but the girl, for your cooperation, but since you are obstinate—” She shrugged and moved toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Drake said quickly. “I’ll do whatever I can if it will help Sharon.”

Tana turned back, smiling mockingly.

“I shouldn’t give you another chance,” she said, “but I am preparing to be merciful. For information concerning the whereabouts of Ali Baba I will see to it that the girl dies quickly.”

“But I don’t know where he is,” Drake said desperately.

“You must do better than that,” Tana said. “You and he attempted to escape together. You were caught; he got away. You must have an idea where he was going.”

“I swear I don’t,” Drake said. “He grabbed me by the arm and led me to the door. I haven’t the faintest idea what he had in mind.”

Tana shrugged.

“Obviously then we can’t bargain. I would have been willing to spare the girl the unpleasantness of being tortured to death, but since you can’t help me I have no recourse but to order the royal torturers to proceed.”

She was standing with her back to a large, massive pillar and as she turned to leave a brown arm appeared from behind the pillar, whipped swiftly about her throat and closed inexorably.

Tana’s reaction was instinctive and ferocious. Every muscle in her lithe, steel-strong body contracted in a wild effort to break the strangling pressure of the arm against her throat.

Drake’s heart pounded with a sudden hope as he watched the woman’s frantic struggle.

Her face reddened and her eyes bulged horribly. Her mouth opened like a wide, red wound as she fought to draw breath into her laboring lungs.

But her struggles were futile. The arm tightened slowly and finally her body slumped with the suddenness of a taut wire snapping.

From behind the pillar stepped a lean, wiry man with brown face and snapping dark eyes. He released his arm from Tana’s throat and stretched her on the floor.

He looked up then and smiled at Drake.

“I did not forget you my friend,” he said.

“Ali Baba!” Drake cried incredulously. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

Ali Baba looked reproachful.

“I do not forget my friends,” he said. He glanced down at Tana’s still form and his face darkened. “Or my enemies.”

He crossed to Drake quickly and unscrewed the gyves that held his wrists. Drake then, with Ali Baba’s help, released Sharon. She massaged her arms gratefully.

“What now?” Drake asked tensely. “We’re free, but that’s about all.” He glanced at the still figure on the floor. “Is she — dead?”

Ali Baba shrugged. “Probably not. She is tough and hard.” He chuckled grimly. “But when the Caliph’s men find her here and it is learned that you have escaped,” he grinned wickedly, “the Caliph will certainly make her wish that, she had never been born.”

“But how are we to get out?” Drake asked. “The doors are well guarded.”

“Trust me,” Ali Baba said. “I know another manner of leaving. We will be safe in my cave in another six hours, I can promise you that.”

“No, we can’t go with you,” Drake said. “We’ve got to find Humai, the wizard, and get back to our own time. Can you help us do that?”

Ali Baba looked dubious.

“I can try,” he said. “But let us hurry. His chambers are on the other side of the castle.”

The approach to Humai’s laboratory was well guarded, but Sharon walked confidently and boldly and the soldiers, who apparently did not know that she had fallen from the Caliph’s favor, bowed deferentially to her with elaborate salaams.

The wizard was peering into a great emerald ball when they entered his smoky chambers. He was wearing a long white gown, marked with the signs of the zodiac. Steaming beakers filled the high-domed room with aromatic gases and in the midst of these swirling vapors Humai appeared as a fat, smiling gnome.

He regarded them with a cheerful, benign smile.

“What an honor,” he said, rubbing his pink hands together. He bowed to Sharon. “I trust you are well and happy?”

Drake realized that Humai probably didn’t know of recent developments between Sharon and the Caliph. He still thought of her as the Caliph’s favorite. That one fact might save them all.

“We’re quite well,” Drake answered. “We are here at the orders of the Caliph. He wishes that Sharon be sent back to her own time.”

Humai peered at them, blinking good-naturedly.

“Is our Caliph so tired already of his little story teller?” he inquired mildly.

“His reasons are his own,” Drake said, “and none of our business. But speed is important.”

“Of course,” Humai murmured. “But we must wait until I talk to the Caliph. There are several things I must ascertain before I can send his story teller back to her own time.” He smiled gently. “How do I know the Caliph wishes her to leave?”

“You have our word on that,” Drake said.

“That, I am sorry, is not sufficient,” Humai said.

“Why do we waste words with the fat fool?” Ali Baba said disgustedly. “Treat rogues like rogues and saints like saints has always been my credo.”

He grabbed Humai by the front of his cloak and jerked him forward. A knife appeared magically in his other hand and its gleaming point grazed the wizard’s pink neck.

“Do you need more persuasion?” he growled.

Humai’s fat face was the color of chalk. His loose lips sagged foolishly and his eyes were wide with terror.

“Please,” he gasped weakly, “take the knife away. I will do as you wish.”

“That’s better,” Ali Baba said.

“I can’t send all of you,” Humai said, breathing a little more easily. “I can send you at the same time, but you will arrive a year apart in the future. My device is graded only at yearly intervals.”

“That’ll have to do,” Drake said. He turned to Sharon. “You first, honey. And get to the State Department as fast as you can when you get to Washington. Remember, don’t waste a second!” He kissed her suddenly. Wait for me, darling. It will only be a year.”

“I’ll wait,” Sharon said. She smiled mistily. “If you don’t show up I’m coming back to get you. And remember, I’m a gal who keeps her word. I never told a story in my life.”

“That’s right,” Drake said. “But—” He stopped abruptly and stared at her, a smile breaking on his face. A dozen facts fitted suddenly together in his mind forming a complete and definite pattern. He started to laugh. “The hell you didn’t!” he said. You’re the greatest story-teller of all time. Why, hell, honey, you’re Scheherazade!”

Sharon stared at him in bewilderment.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Nothing could be more obvious,” Drake grinned. “You certainly remember the story of Scheherazade, the heroine of the Arabian Nights? The beautiful damsel who bewitched the Caliph of Bagdad with her highly imaginative stories and saved her own life by so doing.”

“But,” Sharon protested, blushing, “I never told him anything like the stories in the Arabian Nights! Those stories are terrible. I mean,” she added hastily, “I’ve been told they’re terrible.”

“Maybe you didn’t tell them,” Drake said, “but you certainly got credit for them. In old Arabic the name of the story teller was ‘Sharzard.’ That’s close enough to ‘Sharon Ward’ to make the entire thing fit perfectly.”

Ali Baba interrupted irritably.

“Come, we must hurry.”

“That’s right,” Drake said. He grinned at Sharon. “So long, honey. Remember, you’re going to wait for me.”

Humai led the girl to a small bench on which a delicate, coiled apparatus was set He made minute adjustments on several dials and then clamped a filament wire to Sharon’s left wrist.

“You will feel nothing,” he said gently.

“Goodbye, darling,” Sharon cried.

Drake kissed her quickly.

“A year isn’t so long,” he murmured. “And,” he grinned, stepping back from her, “you’ll have something better to do than tell stories when we get married.”

“Well,” Sharon said, dropping her eyes, “naturally.”

Drake was watching her, memorizing each of her lovely features, the curved arch of her eyebrows, the way her hair fell in waves to her shoulders, when suddenly her body seemed to shimmer, her features blurred faintly as if he were looking at her through a screen — and then she was gone!

He stepped forward involuntarily, a shocked, lost feeling in his heart.

“You are next,” Humai said.

Drake clasped Ali Baba’s hand tightly.

“Why don’t you come too? You’d be only a year beyond me. I’d wait and watch for you.”

“No, my friend,” Ali Baba smiled. Humai fastened the filament to Drake’s wrist.

“I’m sorry,” Drake said.

“So am I,” Ali Baba said, shaking his head. “We have been good comrades.”

Drake was thinking how stupid he had been in not realizing before the relationship between Sharon Ward and the Scheherazade whom most scholars considered a mythical character. He realized that the story of Ali Baba and his forty thieves would be told and retold in Bagdad and gradually take its place in the legends of the Thousand and One Nights.

If he had known that before, he wouldn’t have allowed Ali Baba and his men to blunder into the trap in the Caliph’s palace; for the story of that betrayal he had read in college. But it did no good to think of such things now.

But he did think of one other thing. “Ali Baba,” he said suddenly. “You will not be with us very long.”

“Yes, my comrade?”

“Speak quickly,” Humai said.

“Ali Baba,” Drake said, “will you promise to do me one more favor?”

“Name it, comrade, and by the sacred name of Allah, it shall be done.”

“Those poor wretches on the wheel that operates your cavern gate deserve mercy. Will you release them when you return to your cave?”

Ali Baba frowned.

“But—”

“You promised,” Drake cried.

Ali Baba shook his head disgustedly.

“All right, all right,” he said moodily. “But it is a hard thing you ask, for I have been thinking these last few hours of the exact spoke to which I would chain Tana, the foul ingrate who betrayed us. But,” he shrugged disgustedly, “as you say, I have given my promise. It shall be done.”

“Thanks, Comrade,” Drake said. “You’ll feel better yourself about — He felt a slight shiver shake his body. “Goodbye,” he said anxiously. “I think—”

His consciousness faded in a roaring spiral of darkness that seemed to pluck him upward with incredible speed and power...

When Sharon regained consciousness she was in Washington, D.C., and to her intense relief, in the twentieth century. She went directly to her apartment, where she got rid of the clothes she had worn in the Caliph’s harem; then bathed and dressed she took a cab for the State Department...

The three men at the table listened to her story, carefully, with thoughtfully pursed lips, frowns on their faces.

When she had finished, the man in the center, a tall, gray-haired gentleman, with a shrewd lined face, glanced briefly at his two companions and then turned back to her, smiling.

“Miss Ward,” he said, “we owe you a debt of thanks. From what you have told us we will be able to make the necessary preparations to check any attempt the Axis might make to invade South America.

“We should have seen the way the wind was blowing ourselves,” he continued, with a wry smile; “but sometimes even the most obvious facts are overlooked.”

“I feel relieved that it’s out of my hands,” Sharon said. “Drake — Mr. Masterson insisted that I come to you immediately.”

“He was right,” the gray haired man assured her. He paused and then frowned. “But where is Mr. Masterson now? He is one of our most able young men and there’s a number of jobs we could use him on.”

Sharon faltered.

“I really can’t tell you,” she said, because I don’t know. But he won’t be back to Washington for another year.”

“I see, Miss Ward. I realize, of course, that he must have been out of the country to gather this information.” He shook his head admiringly. “These young men have a spirit of adventure that I respect tremendously. Why this whole thing is just like something from the Arabian Nights.”

Sharon smiled.

“Isn’t it, though?” she said.

She left the offices of the State Department, feeling relieved and fairly happy. But she wondered what the devil she was going to do for a whole year...

World Beyond Belief

First published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1943.

Chapter I

Oscar Doodle arrived at his modestly furnished apartment every evening at six o’clock and by six ten he would be resting in his favorite chair sipping a glass of light sherry and reading the evening papers.

The sherry was brought to him by his Filipino houseboy, Chico, Oscar’s one extravagance.

This particular evening was no exception to the inevitable pattern. He was seated comfortably enjoying his sherry and Chico was busy in the small kitchen, preparing dinner.

Oscar Doodle was not a remarkable man. In fact if anyone was interested in making a catalogue of the prosaic, colorless, unimportant people in the country, Oscar’s name would be certain of inclusion. He had never made Who’s Who; he would have been, however, a candidate for Who Cares?

His life was bounded on three sides; his job, as a minor executive in a small bank, in whose service he had slaved for sixteen years, was his chief interest. Second to this came his well-ordered and pleasant apartment, dominated by the marvelous efficiency of Chico. And last and least was the not-too-young lady with whom he kept fairly steady company, Miss Agatha Prim.

Miss Prim was a quiet, cultivated sort of person and he found her company restful. What she found in him no one ever bothered to ask.

Chico came into the room as he finished the last of his sherry.

“Dinner is ready,” Chico said quietly. He was brown and moon-faced with a quick flashing smile that displayed a mouthful of large white teeth.

Oscar rose to his feet and burped gently, another of his punctual habits.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m going out tonight, Chico, I wish you’d set out my gray suit.”

All of Oscar’s suits were gray but he and Chico never mentioned this fact. When he switched suits he simply asked for his gray suit. Chico understood.

“I’m going to a party at Miss Prim’s,” Oscar said, “so I’m afraid I may be a little late.”

Chico nodded.

“You play crystal ball games tonight?” he asked. His bright smile lit up his face.

Oscar winced. Chico’s question was in reference to his Agatha’s almost fanatic preoccupation with various mediums, fortune tellers and the like from whom she derived the vicarious thrill of peering into the future lives of her friends.

“I’m afraid we will,” he said, sighing. “Agatha met some woman at a party recently who told her of a medium who has made an intensive study of reincarnation.” Oscar glanced at Chico, almost apologetically. “That’s very interesting, of course,” he said.

Chico nodded brightly.

“This medium will be there tonight,” Oscar said, “so I suppose we’ll spend the night listening to her discuss reincarnation.” He coughed slightly. “Stimulating evening.” He shook his head and went into the dining room where he ate an excellent meal before showering and dressing for Agatha’s party.

Chico followed him to the door of the apartment and helped him into his coat.

“I will leave glass of warm milk on stove,” he said.

“Thank you, Chico,” Oscar said. He picked up his hat, set it squarely on his balding head and left for the party...

Agatha met him at the door of her apartment with a glad smile. She was taller than Oscar by several inches and put together at rather sharp angles. She wore a quiet dark dress and no make-up. Her eyes were large and bright in the pallor of her face.

“You must come right in, Oscar,” she said excitedly. “Madame Obary is here and she is simply fascinating!”

“I’m sure she is,” Oscar said drily.

He was led into the apartment, his coat and hat were taken by Agatha’s colored maid, and then he was introduced to the assembled guests.

Most of them, he reflected gloomily as he dutifully smiled and shook hands, were not worth meeting. Then he was escorted across the room to a large divan, where an even larger woman was holding court.

“Madame Obary,” Agatha said breathlessly, “I want you to meet Oscar.”

The creature on the couch turned her solemn, bovine eyes in Oscar’s direction and nodded slowly, sending a tremor down her many chins that was like the effect of a stone tossed into a quiet pool.

She was dark with oily black hair in a bun on her neck and her arms were circled with dozens of weird bracelets. Her plain dress fitted her like a sagging circus tent.

“How do you do?” she murmured, in a quiet throaty voice. “I am always pleased to meet new disciples.”

“Well, I’m hardly that,” Oscar said with an uneasy laugh.

“You will be,” Madame Obary said.

“Madame Obary,” Agatha said, turning to Oscar with breathless animation, “has been telling us the most incredible things. Really the things that go on are simply amazing.”

“Things?” Oscar said blankly.

“I mean incidents in the occult,” Agatha said a trifle impatiently. “You’ve simply no idea!”

“I guess I haven’t,” said Oscar, feeling somehow that his reaction was a bit inadequate.

“Madame Obary,” continued Agatha with a rush, “is one of the four people in the world who completely understands the theory of reincarnation.”

Madame Obary cleared her throat impressively.

“One of the three persons in the world who understands it,” she corrected severely.

“Isn’t that marvelous?” Agatha said, turning an enraptured face to Oscar. “Just think! One of the three!”

“Well, well,” Oscar said.

“Madame Obary’s theory,” Agatha went on with a breathlessness that paid high tribute to the importance of Madame Obary’s theory, “is that our ancestors are alive today, but living on another time plane, and—”

“Please!” Madame Obary said, raising one hand sternly. “I will explain.”

“Yes, of course,” said Agatha chastened.

“All life is simultaneous,” Agatha said in her rich booming voice, “the terms of Past, Present and Future are inaccurate misnomers. Such categories do not exist. The lives of our ancestors and our grandchildren are being lived this moment, but on a separate time plane from our own. Do you understand?”

She directed the question at Oscar and from her stern features and beetling brows it was obvious she would brook no nonsense. Oscar, her tone and manner clearly implied, had damn well better understand.

“I get the point,” Oscar said. “It’s a little vague,” he added apologetically. “The main idea is clear enough, but the business about the grandchildren—” his voice trailed off weakly. He couldn’t go on. The whole damn, nonsensical theory was more than a little vague. It was as cloudy as an opium smoker’s dream and not half so attractive.

“Naturally,” Madame Obary said, with a superior smile, “you will not be able to understand the more subtle implications of the theory. A trained mind is needed for such comprehension.” She turned to Agatha. “Is this young man to be our subject for this evening?”

“What?” said Oscar blankly.

Agatha put her hand anxiously on his arm.

“Now don’t get excited, Oscar,” she said, smiling nervously at him. “I didn’t tell you before, but Madame Obary needs a subject for her demonstration and I told her that you wouldn’t mind. Please be helpful.”

“Just what is required of me?” Oscar asked warily.

Madame Obary said, “You will be put into a trance and I will explore your subconscious mind. It is my hope to establish contact with your ancestors through your subconscious and, if the séance is successful, you may be able to communicate with them also. This is done by bridging the time planes that separate you from your ancestors. The success of my undertaking will depend completely on the sensitivity of your receptive powers.”

Oscar reflected with a definite bitterness that if Madame Obary’s ridiculous experiment should happen to work she would get all the credit; but if it failed, which was by all odds the more certain probability, the blame would fall on his shoulders. It didn’t seem fair.

But there was nothing he could do about it.

Madame Bovary had struggled to her feet and was already making preparations. She ordered him to lie on the divan and then asked that all the lights, with the exception of one dim lamp, be turned off. From an enormous handbag she drew forth a sheaf of papers on which were inscribed designs that looked as if they were results of a drawing class of morons.

She sat down on a chair beside the couch and spread these designs over her ample lap.

“Empty your mind of everything,” she said to Oscar, as if she were referring to a garbage hopper. “Your consciousness must be a complete blank.”

One of the guests in a dark corner of the room chuckled and remarked that that shouldn’t be too hard for Oscar. There was a general laugh.

Oscar squirmed angrily on the couch. Was he brought here to be mocked, humiliated, insulted? He decided that he was and, having reached that conclusion, closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest with icy deliberation.

Agatha and the guests were in the shadows of the room and they watched tensely as Madame Obary laid one plump hand on Oscar’s forehead.

Oscar felt as if a damp fish had been suddenly dropped across his eyes, but he said nothing. For he was conscious of a peculiar sensation of drowsiness. Darkness seemed to be drifting in on his mind and his eyelids were heavy. He stirred slightly on the couch and tried to open his eyes, but the effort was too much. He breathed heavily, rhythmically and the last sound he heard was Madame Obary’s voice saying,

“Sleep and let your mind rest.”

Oscar drifted off to sleep.

Chapter II

When Oscar awoke the lights were on in Agatha’s apartment, but the guests were gone. Agatha was sitting on a chair beside the couch looking at him with what appeared to be a disappointed expression.

“What happened?” Oscar asked blankly, struggling to a sitting position.

“Nothing!” Agatha said sharply. “You were a complete washout, Oscar. Madame Obary was quite disappointed. And so were all the guests.”

Oscar put both hands to his temples and shook his head slowly. There was a funny sensation in his head, a tired, dazed feeling. As if a legion of pygmies had walked over his brain with spiked shoes.

“Nothing happened, eh?” he said.

“Madame Obary tried for an hour to establish contact with your ancestors through your subconscious, but you were thoroughly uncooperative.” Agatha pursed her thin lips in irritation. “I was humiliated.”

Oscar put his hands to his head again.

“How do you know nothing happened?” he asked. “My head certainly feels as if something had.”

“Madame Obary said the attempt was unsuccessful,” Agatha said.

“Who are you going to believe? Madame Obary or my head?” Oscar said belligerently. He stood up and straightened his coat carefully. “I’ll be going now. I think this whole thing has been completely ridiculous.”

“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it,” Agatha said. “I’ll get your coat.”

“Thank you,” said Oscar coolly.

He didn’t sleep very well that night. And the next morning it took all of Chico’s gentle ministrations to bring him back to a fairly pleasant frame of mind. He breakfasted, dressed carefully and left his apartment, still feeling depressed.

He reached the bank on time and went directly to his small private office in back of the vaults. Oscar’s job with the bank entailed handling the records of the safety deposit vaults and he was daily in contact with large sums of money. He had been given the job because the president of the bank was of the private opinion that Oscar was too timid to steal and too stupid to know what to do with the money if he did steal it.

Oscar’s private secretary glanced up when he entered the reception room of his office. She was a very pretty blonde girl, efficient and careful, but at sight of Oscar her mouth dropped open in a very unbecoming fashion, And her blue eyes widened with astonishment.

“Close your mouth, please, Miss Brown,” Oscar said testily.

Miss Brown closed her mouth, but the expression of astonishment remained on her face.

“Whom did you wish to see,” she asked in a faint dazed voice.

“What’s the matter with you?” Oscar demanded. “I don’t wish to see anyone. I want to get to work and I’ll need you for dictation. Can you come right in?”

Miss Brown rose from her chair and backed slightly away from him, her eyes glassy.

“Mr. Doodle is busy now,” she managed to gasp. “You’d better come back later.”

“Mr. Doodle is busy?” Oscar cried. “What kind of nonsense is this? I’m Mr. Doodle. How could I be busy and talking to you at the same time?”

“You look like Mr. Doodle,” his secretary said, “but Mr. Doodle is in his office. He’s been here for an hour working.”

Oscar regarded his secretary severely.

“Miss Brown,” he said with quiet deliberation, “I am not amused by your joke. For some reason you are acting in a most irregular manner. I am willing to overlook your conduct if you can assure me it will not happen again. I am going to my office now and I will give you a half-hour to get control of yourself. Then I will expect you for dictation. Am I making myself quite clear?”

He started firmly for his office door, but Miss Brown stepped in front of him.

“You can’t go in there,” she said frantically. “I’ve told you Mr. Doodle is working. He’ll be terribly annoyed if you go in without an appointment. I don’t know who you are but if you wish to see Mr. Doodle you’ll have to phone for an appointment.”

“You’re fired!” Oscar yelled, losing control of his dignity. He shoved the girl aside, opened the door and strode into his office, shaking his head angrily.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” a voice from behind his desk asked quietly.

Oscar stared with bulging eyes at the man behind his desk. The man wore a gray suit, black tie and white stiff collar, identical with his own. And the man looked exactly like he did, scant, mousy brown hair, watery blue eyes, thin, pressed lips. All of Oscar’s physical characteristics were duplicated to an amazing degree by the man behind his desk.

As Oscar stared unbelievingly at this twin of his, the man tapped the top of the desk with nervous fingers — a gesture Oscar recognized as his own when irritated.

“And what is the meaning of this intrusion, may I ask again?” the man behind the desk inquired icily.

“Who are you?” Oscar blurted. “What are you doing at that desk?”

“My name is Doodle,” the man replied. “And this happens to be my desk.” He smiled and said sarcastically, “Is there anything else you wish to know?”

“You’re an impostor,” Oscar cried. “I’m Oscar Doodle and that’s my desk. You’d better clear out of here before I call the guards and have you thrown out.”

“Precisely my own idea,” the man at the desk said calmly. He punched a button and leaned back in his chair, “I don’t know what your game is, but I’ve stood as much of your insolence as I intend to.”

“Now just a minute,” Oscar said. He was experiencing a desperate, trapped feeling. Maybe this was all some wild dream! “I belong here,” he said weakly. “I’ve worked here for years.”

The door of the office opened and two of the husky, uniformed bank guards entered.

They glanced at both men in the office and their faces were surprised, but their attention was directed to the man behind the desk.

“Did you ring, Mr. Doodle?” one of them asked.

“Yes, I did,” the bogus Mr. Doodle said. “This gentleman here,” he waved a hand at Oscar, “broke into my office a few minutes ago and I think he might be violent. Please escort him to the door. If he gives you any trouble call the police.”

“Right, Mr. Doodle,” one of the guards answered respectfully. He glared at Oscar. “Come on, chum, you heard what Mr. Doodle said.”

“You can’t do this to me!” Oscar cried frantically. He glared at the man behind the desk who was impersonating him. “You’re a fraud! You know you are!” he shouted.

One of the guards grabbed him from behind and dragged him to the door.

“Shut up,” he said, “or we’ll call the wagon. I think you belong in a strait-jacket myself.”

“I demand to see Mr. Haskins, the president,” Oscar yelled. “I won’t be treated this way. It’s — it’s unAmerican, that’s what it is.”

The other guard opened the door and Oscar was hustled through the reception room, out into the main section of the bank and finally deposited on the sidewalk before the great bronze doors.

The two guards placed themselves in front of the door, arms crossed.

“Now be a good guy and beat it,” one of them said. “You’ve caused enough trouble already. Go home and take a nap for yourself and you’ll feel better.” Oscar stared mournfully, despairingly at the massive portals of the bank and then at the grim guards who barred the entrance. His world was collapsing about his head.

“But this is all a mistake,” he said tearfully, “I belong here, I’m Mr. Doodle, I—”

“Stop wasting our time,” the second guard said irritably. “If you aren’t on your way in ten seconds, I’m gonna call the cops.”

“But—”

“Beat it!”

Oscar winced at the harshness of the guard’s voice. He gazed wistfully at the doors of the bank and then, with a dispirited sigh, he turned and shuffled away, not knowing or caring what direction he took.

He walked for an hour, oblivious to the people he passed, dazed and numb. His brain wasn’t functioning. He couldn’t make any sense out of what had happened to him, nor could he figure out what he should do.

Finally he stopped at a small park and, from shear weariness, sat down. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. Never had he felt so completely rudderless and helpless.

He glanced dully at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He hadn’t been away from his desk at ten o’clock on a weekday morning for over twelve years.

What could he do?

He decided, with a flash of his old invincible efficiency, to review the matter logically and calmly. Someone had decided to impersonate him, take over his job at the bank. That put him, Oscar, on the outside looking in. His task, therefore, was to expose this impersonator, turn him over to the authorities and thus reclaim his rightful position.

How was this to be done? He frowned and thought for a while without reaching any definite conclusions. What he needed was a confidant, someone with whom he could discuss the entire affair in all its various ramifications and then, through the discussion and in exchange of ideas he might possibly find a solution to this dilemma.

Agatha was the only person he could think of, and while she was not ideal, she would have to do. He hoped she had gotten over her annoyance of last night.

Armed with a definite plan of action he felt better. He stood up, set his hat at an angle that was extremely rakish for him and strode to the corner to wait for a street car...

He reached Agatha’s apartment building in about twenty minutes and went up, as was his custom, without ringing. He knocked on the door and took off his hat when he heard Agatha’s light swift steps approaching.

She opened the door and a blank expression of astonishment dropped over her thin features as she saw him. She opened and closed her eyes, as if she didn’t believe the evidence they were reporting to her brain.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “May I come in? I’m in trouble, Agatha, and I need your help.”

The flustered expression on Agatha’s face faded as she got herself under control. She straightened her shoulders and regarded him with eyes that were suddenly impersonal and haughty.

“You most certainly may not come in,” she said, “and my name happens to be Miss Prim to strangers.”

Oscar stared at her in bewilderment.

“What’s the matter with you, Agatha?” he demanded. “I’m no stranger. I’ve called you Agatha for the last ten years.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Agatha said grimly, “but if you don’t stop bothering me I’ll — I’ll call my fiancé.”

“Your fiancé?” Oscar echoed incredulously. “What are you talking about?”

Agatha turned and called over her shoulder.

“Oscar, please come here. This impertinent creature is annoying me.”

Oscar felt the bottom of his stomach suddenly drop about eight inches as a voice from behind Agatha said, “I’m coming,” and his heart almost stopped beating when the door was opened wide and a man who looked exactly like him appeared at Agatha’s side.

This new arrival was dressed in a gray suit, black tie and neat shoes — Oscar’s habitual costume — and physically he could have passed for Oscar’s twin. He looked as much like Oscar as had his impersonator at the bank. “Who are you?” Oscar blurted. “My name happens to be Oscar Doodle,” the man beside Agatha said coldly, “and who are you?”

Oscar put his hands to his head and stared wildly at the man in the door.

“You can’t be Oscar Doodle,” he said hysterically. “I’m Oscar Doodle. I’ve always been Oscar Doodle.” He pointed desperately at Agatha. “She’s my girl.” The man who called himself Oscar Doodle frowned.

“That will be enough of your impertinence,” he said sternly. “This woman,” he said, putting an arm about Agatha’s thin shoulders, “will soon be my wife.” He took her left hand in his and Oscar saw that Agatha’s third finger was adorned with a large, sparkling diamond engagement ring.

“No!” Oscar cried. “This is all some nightmare. Don’t you see? I’m Oscar Doodle!”

Oscar’s second twin studied him with a judicious frown.

“I do notice a slight resemblance between us,” he said slowly, “but that certainly is not sufficient justification for your coming here and claiming to be me. Now I’d advise you to clear out of here before I call the state insane asylum and tell them I’ve got a dangerous lunatic on my hands.”

He finished speaking and with a cold bow slammed the door in Oscar’s face. Oscar stood in the hallway several minutes, too stunned to move.

What wild web was he caught in? What was he to do?

This was the second twin that had bobbed up mysteriously to steal a phase of his existence. A sudden thought occurred to him. Maybe this chap with Agatha was the same one that had been at the bank. That seemed logical. For it would be too coincidental for two persons who looked so amazingly like him to exist. They just couldn’t.

But supposing there were actually two men who looked identically like him — one at the bank and another here with Agatha? That would mean he was cut forever from his job and from Agatha’s company! She had accepted a ring from his second twin, obviously believing him to be the real Oscar.

Oscar put his palms to his temples and groaned. Where would it all end?

He found himself on the street a few minutes later, walking aimlessly. When he could think logically again, he decided that he had better withdraw his small bank account before one of his impersonators had the same idea. Without a job, he would need money to tide him over until he landed something else.

But when he reached the bank where he kept his small account, he received another shock. The teller looked at his pass book with a frown and then shoved it back to him.

“Is this a joke, Mr. Doodle?” he asked, and it was obvious from his tone, that he, for one, didn’t think it was a very funny joke. “You were in an hour ago and withdrew your entire account. You said then you’d lost your pass book. We issued you a duplicate and gave you all your funds and you closed the account.”

Oscar gripped the bars of the teller’s cage with clammy hands.

“No!” he croaked hoarsely, “there’s been a mistake. That wasn’t me you gave the money to, it was a man who is impersonating me.”

The teller frowned again.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Doodle,” he said. “You see, we checked your signature as a formality when you closed your account and we have it on file right now. It was yours, all right.” His tone suddenly became severe. “Would you care to take the matter up with our auditor?”

Oscar backed slightly away from the cage.

“No,” he whispered feebly, “I guess not. It’s — it’s my mistake. I just remembered.”

He turned and ducked out of the bank. Spots were whirling before his eyes. His job, girl and money gone! Where would this insane comedy end? A terrible unnerving thought struck him then and he felt his face stiffen with horror as its implications swept over him.

Supposing he wasn’t Oscar Doodle!

Maybe he was an amnesia victim! Maybe he just thought he was Oscar Doodle. If that were true, he was out of his mind, a lunatic. Possibly he had escaped from an asylum and the authorities were scouring the city for him this instant!

He skulked past the policeman at the corner with his hat pulled down over his face and his heart beating painfully fast. What if the policeman clapped him in jail and he found himself to be a wife-slayer or an axe-murderer?

None of these things was beyond the realm of possibility because if he wasn’t Oscar Doodle, he might be anyone; and that “anyone” might be anybody!

His head started to ache. Everything was so bewilderingly confused.

And then he remembered Chico, his smiling, brown-faced valet, and felt a surge of relief. The fact that he remembered Chico should prove that he was actually Oscar Doodle, and he suddenly felt that if he could get to Chico, have a cup of his incomparable beef broth and relax quietly in his comfortable chair he would be able to think his way out of this mess.

His anxiety to see Chico was so urgent that he forgot his usual economic scruples and took a cab to his apartment. He trotted quickly up the steps, feeling better every second. In his own quiet apartment, relaxed and comfortable, he’d feel like himself again.

He let himself in with his key and walked happily into his familiar, comfortable living room. There was a man sitting in his chair, smoking, and reading a newspaper, and when he put the newspaper down and glanced up, Oscar’s jaw dropped foolishly and the triphammers of panic started thudding at his brain again.

For this man was another twin!

Chapter III

The third twin was wearing Oscar’s dressing gown and his feet were comfortably shod in Oscar’s felt-lined slippers. He was sipping a glass of sherry and one of Oscar’s cigars was in his hand.

“What are you doing here?” Oscar blurted, but he had the horrible conviction that the question was superfluous.

The man in the chair looked at him with well-bred surprise.

“Where else would I be?” he asked, “This is my apartment. I think the question should be put to you. What are you doing here?”

“This isn’t your apartment,” Oscar wailed. “It’s mine. I pay the rent.”

“My good fellow, I’m afraid you’re suffering a slight delusion. I am Oscar Doodle. This is my apartment. I started for work this morning, but returned to nurse a slight cold, which is why I happen to be here now. If you’re satisfied I wish you’d leave me to my paper. You’ll find the door just behind you,” he added dryly.

“You can’t order me out of my own apartment,” Oscar cried frantically. He stared wildly at the glass of sherry in the man’s hand. “What do you mean drinking my wine? and smoking my cigars? You’re the one who’s going to get out!”

“Pardon, what is trouble, please?” a soft voice said from the doorway of the adjoining room.

“Ah, Chico,” the third twin murmured, “will you please show this gentleman to the door?”

Oscar wheeled to Chico, who stood in the doorway, a smile of confusion on his round, brown face.

“You know me, Chico,” he said imploringly.

Chico smiled in bewilderment and turned to the man in the chair.

“Look much like you Mr. Doodly,” he said.

“Yes, I noticed the resemblance,” the third twin said, “but I’m not flattered. Will you see that he finds the door all right?”

Chico moved toward Oscar.

“Please go now,” he said. “Mister Doodly say you must leave.”

“Chico!” Oscar cried, “look at me. I’m Mr. Doodle, your employer.”

“Please go now,” Chico repeated implacably.

Oscar’s shoulders sagged and he felt the lead weight of despair pressing in on his brain. What was there for him to do?

He turned and stumbled toward the door. Chico followed him and held the door, smiling politely.

“Come again,” he said, and closed the door firmly when Oscar passed through to the hall.

The enormity of this last shock numbed Oscar to the point that he was unable to make even an attempt to think. He wandered dazedly down the steps and onto the street, hardly conscious that he was moving.

He felt like a man without a country. Everything in his life, everything cherished and familiar had been stolen from him by these damnable twins, leaving him a homeless, jobless, penniless derelict. There was no one to whom he could turn, no place he could go for comfort and solace.

He plodded along miserably, wondering vaguely what would become of him. He was even too old for the army. No one wanted him, and there was no place he could call his own.

He walked aimlessly the rest of that day, not stopping for lunch or dinner, and when it became dark, he found himself in a strange part of the city, miles from his apartment. He realized that he was hungry and tired. He thought of Chico’s excellent meals, his wide, comfortable bed and a groan of pure anguish passed his lips.

Gone forever!

He counted his money and found that he had almost ten dollars in his wallet. He had to sleep so he stopped at the first hotel he came to, registered defiantly as Oscar Doodle, went up to his room and fell asleep on the bed without removing his clothes...

Oscar slept like a dead man, until he was awakened by a sharp, imperious knock on the door. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of the room, unable to imagine where he might be. Gradually the events of the day filtered into his mind and he struggled to a sitting position on the bed. The knock that awakened him was repeated; he turned on a light and walked to the door.

“Who is it?” he asked cautiously.

“Oscar Doodle?” a voice asked.

“Yes. What do you want?”

“We must see you. It is imperative. Please open the door.”

Against his better judgment Oscar unlocked the door, but before he could turn the knob, the door was shoved open and two men strode into the room.

Oscar fell back and stared at them with wide, astonished eyes. For they were two of the identically similar men who had entered his life the day before. They were his twins in every respect, except that instead of looking astonished, they wore expressions of grim anxiety.

One of them closed and locked the door while the other turned to him and waved to a chair.

“Sit down,” he ordered crisply, “we have quite a lot to say to you.”

Oscar sat down meekly, but his astonishment was fading and another emotion was replacing it — anger.

“I’ve got a lot to say to you, too,” he said grimly.

“That can wait,” the man who had done the talking said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Oscar’s other twin, after locking the hotel room door had taken the remaining chair and was staring intently at Oscar.

“Well, what do you want?” Oscar demanded. “Haven’t you messed my life up enough without ruining my sleep to boot?”

The man on the bed said, “Control your temper. We’re all in a bad spot. First, let me introduce ourselves. I am, as nearly as I can compute, your fourteen times greatgrandfather. By virtue of my seniority, and to simplify things, think of me as Oscar Doodle the First. My companion,” he said, waving negligently to the other twin, “you may consider Oscar Doodle the Second. He, incidentally, is my great-great-great-grandchild. You’ll have to take my word for these things.” He grinned wickedly. “And my word, as any of my cohorts of the fourteenth century could tell you, isn’t worth a tinker’s dam.”

Oscar stared at the speaker with unbelievingly eyes.

“You can’t be serious,” he gasped.

“I am completely serious,” Oscar Doodle the First said dryly. “We were brought to this time plane through the medium of a sorceress who used your subconscious mind to complete the transition. You had better accept that fact my much-removed grandson and stop staring at me with bug-eyes. I, for one, was delighted at the change. At the time of the good witch’s intervention I was languishing in an unpleasant jail. I find your apartment much more comfortable.”

“So you’re the one who took my apartment!” Oscar cried indignantly.

Oscar the First smiled. “Yes. Oscar the Second took your — ahem — beautiful damsel.”

Oscar the Second grunted sourly.

“I certainly got stung on the deal,” he said bitterly. He glared at Oscar. “I can’t say much for your taste in women.”

Oscar stared at his twins in bewilderment.

“What kind of a deal are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain,” Oscar the First said. “You see three of us were brought here to this time plane through the medium of your subconscious mind. We knew all about you, everything you did and thought, because we had been in contact with your mind for some time. When we arrived we were penniless, friendless in a great, strange city. Our only recourse was to move in on your life. We divided your existence, in a manner of speaking.” He spread his hands and smiled at Oscar’s obvious confusion. “It was really simple. I took your apartment, Oscar the Second here took your girl and Oscar the Third, the other member of our trio, appropriated your job. You see that gave us all a measure of comfort and security.”

“But what about me?” Oscar wailed. “I’m out in the cold. I haven’t got anything left.”

“That’s right,” Oscar the First said blandly, “I knew you’d catch on. And one other thing. We divided your bank account. It was the only fair thing to do.”

Oscar stared bitterly at his two twins from Time.

“And what do you want now? Did you discover I have some gold fillings you overlooked in your original inventory?”

“Nothing like that,” Oscar the First, who seemed to be the spokesman, said. “We’ve come to you about something which may jeopardize our pleasant little set-up. You see we made a rather unhappy choice when we put Oscar the Third in your job at the Bank.”

“Why?” asked Oscar.

“It so happens,” Oscar the First said, “that Oscar the Third was a notorious confidence man and thief in his own time level and we’re afraid that he might revert to type in the presence of all the money surrounding him in his new job.”

“Oh my God!” Oscar groaned.

“You see,” Oscar the First said quietly, “it’s no light matter. What would happen to all of us if our light-fingered relative decided to stuff his pockets with money and leave for parts unknown? The situation would become awkward. Descriptions would be broadcast, your apartment would be searched immediately, your girl would be questioned and,” Oscar the First paused eloquently, “the police drag-net would catch all of us.”

“I, for one,” Oscar the Second said moodily, “would relish a change.” He glanced disgustedly at Oscar. “That female of yours would make a man yearn for prison bars.”

“You didn’t have to give her an engagement ring, did you?” Oscar snapped.

Oscar the Second shrugged. “It wasn’t my money I was spending. And it made the deal that much more binding.”

“Come, come, now,” Oscar the First put in smoothly, “this is no time for trivial details. We’ve got to fix things so our thieving relation doesn’t get us all into trouble. Who has any suggestions?”

Oscar leaned back in his chair and smiled with sudden confidence. An idea had occurred to him that might get him out of this spot.

“I have nothing to suggest,” he said calmly. “This is your baby and you can spank it. I’ve been gyped out of my job, my apartment and my girl, so why should I want to help you anyway? Now I’m going back to sleep. Will you leave quietly or shall I call the house detective?”

His two twins stood up uneasily.

The first Oscar said, “Not a very sporting attitude, old fellow. But if you won’t help, you won’t. We can’t very well make you.”

When his twins had left Oscar stretched out on the bed again, but he was smiling contentedly. Before he went to sleep he put in a call for six in the morning. He’d show these intruders from the Past where to get off at...

Oscar was at the bank the next morning before the doors were opened. His plan was simplicity itself. He’d simply beat his twin to the job and then, when his obnoxious impersonator arrived, he’d have him thrown out.

He was so anxious to get to his desk that he failed to notice the rather peculiar look the watchman gave him when he opened the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Doodle,” he said carefully.

“Morning, John,” Oscar said and hurried past him to his office.

It was a little after eight and he was the first one at the bank. He settled himself at his desk brimful of confidence. He’d show ’em. At least he had his job back now and he was certain he’d be able to reclaim the other lost phases of his existence.

He worked for an hour, happily doing the routine work that he had done for years, and he kept one eye peeled on the door awaiting the arrival of his impersonator. While he was waiting he did a little thinking of his conversation the previous night with the men who claimed to be his ancestors. He wondered if there was any stock in their story. They said they had been brought from their own time levels through the medium of a sorceress. That would be Madame Obary. She had told him she was trying to communicate with his ancestors through his subconscious mind. Maybe her scheme had worked too well. Instead of just communicating with his ancestors it looked as if she had brought them to the Present in the flesh.

Oscar shook his head. What a mess she had made for him. But he wasn’t going to stay licked. Reclaiming his job was only the first step in the battle. He’d keep fighting until he’d driven these unwanted ancestors of his completely out of his life.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He smiled in anticipation and squared his shoulders.

“Come in!” he said sternly.

The door opened and his blonde secretary entered. She stared at him in astonishment and then a frantic expression of worry appeared on her face.

“Mr. Doodle,” she cried, “what are you doing here?”

Oscar cleared his throat severely.

“Where else would I be, Miss Brown?” he inquired dryly.

“But you can’t stay here,” Miss Brown said, looking wildly about the room. “You’ve got to hide. I’ll help you. I won’t tell anyone I’ve seen you.” She crossed to his side with quick, anxious steps and took his arm in her hands and pulled him to his feet.

“Please,” she said imploringly, “you can hide in the closet. Then tonight I’ll help you slip out.”

Oscar removed his arm from her grasp.

“I don’t know what’s come over you, Miss Brown,” he gasped. He stared into her anxious, worried eyes and shook his head. “You’re talking nonsense. I think you had better take the rest of the day off and rest.”

“But you’ve got to listen to me,” Miss Brown said pleadingly. There were tears of concern in her eyes and her pretty face was clouded with worry. “There’s no time to waste. They’ll be here any minute.”

“Who will be here any minute?” Oscar demanded. “And why should I hide in the closet because some person or persons unknown are visiting me in my office? I have done nothing wrong, I don’t need to hide from anyone.”

The door had opened as he was speaking and when he finished a hard, cold voice said, “It wouldn’t have done you any good to hide, Doodle, the game is up.”

Miss Brown turned on slim ankles as three heavy-set men walked heavily into the office.

“I tried to tell you,” she wailed, turning back to Oscar.

Oscar stared at the three men with dazed, uncomprehending eyes.

“What’s all this about?” he asked. “Don’t pull the innocent act,” one of the men said sarcastically. He flipped his coat lapel aside, displaying a gleaming police shield. “I’m Higgins from Central. We want to have a little chat with you down at the station. Get your coat.”

Oscar sat down heavily. He felt as if he had been struck at the base of the skull with a stuffed eel skin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said weakly.

“You will soon, then,” Higgins said. “Forty thousand bucks was stolen from here last night and we’ve got three witnesses from the bank who say you’re the man who pulled the job.”

Comprehension dawned on Oscar and he felt his mouth going dry. A cold hand of terror was closing over his heart. His twin, his pilfering ancestor, who had impersonated him yesterday, had stolen forty thousand dollars from the bank. And the police thought that he was the one who had committed the robbery.

He stared wildly at the grim faces of the three policemen.

“No, no,” he cried hysterically, “you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t steal the money. It was someone who looked like me. I’m innocent.”

“You’ll be given a chance to prove it,” Higgins said. “Now get your coat.” Miss Brown was sniffing into a handkerchief in the corner.

“Oh, Mr. Doodle,” she wailed, “why did you do it?”

Higgins smiled sardonically.

“So you’re innocent, eh? You’d better start talking, Doodle. Where’s the money?”

“I don’t know,” Oscar said wildly. “I haven’t got it.”

“Then where did you hide it?”

“I didn’t hide it,” Oscar cried. He looked entreatingly at the grim circle of faces. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“All right,” Higgins said, “you’re going to be tough. We can play that game, too. Get your coat and don’t make me ask you again.”

Oscar staggered to his feet and put on his coat.

“This is all a mistake,” he bleated. “Sure,” Higgins said, “and you made it.”

Miss Brown caught his arm as he walked to the door.

“I’ll come and see you, Mr. Doodle.” Oscar swallowed and walked through the door, too dazed to answer. He wondered vaguely if Alcatraz was air-conditioned in the summertime.

Chapter IV

Oscar sat in a small grim cell with his head buried in his hands. This was his blackest hour. Three witnesses from the bank had just left, after testifying with some reluctance that they had seen Oscar the previous afternoon cram cash into a black leather bag before leaving for the day.

The case against him was air-tight. He was doomed unless he could, somehow, find his impersonator and make him return the money. Oscar raised his head and stared gloomily at the solid bars of his cell. There was no chance of getting out of this place, and unless he did, there was no chance of ever proving himself innocent.

He sighed and dropped his head back to his hands. A few minutes later, he heard a footstep outside the cell. He looked up and saw Higgins, the detective, standing outside the cell, hands in his pockets and a large cigar in his mouth.

“Still ain’t talking, eh?” Higgins murmured.

“I tell you I’ve got nothing to tell,” Oscar said. “I didn’t steal the money, so I don’t know where it’s hidden.”

Higgins took the cigar from his mouth and stared reflectively at its glowing tip.

“I’ll be frank with you, Doodle,” he said, “you haven’t got a chance of escaping conviction with your yam. The judge will instruct the jury to convict and that means your worries will be over for the next few dozen years. But a conviction like that doesn’t do us any good. We want the money. The insurance company is already raising hell with the chief. They want the money and they don’t give a damn about the thief.” Higgins leaned closer and blew a slow smoke ring into Oscar’s cell. “Now if you play ball with me, give the tip on where the stuff is hidden, I’ll see to it that the judge goes light on you. You’ll be a free man in a few years. But,” he shrugged, “if you don’t want to talk we’ll make it as tough on you as we can. We’ll try you for everything on the book and give you life. Now what do you say?”

Oscar swallowed miserably.

“What can I say? You won’t believe me when I tell you I didn’t take the money. You won’t believe me when I tell you I don’t know where it’s hidden. But I am telling the truth.”

“Okay,” Higgins’ face hardened. “Play it your way, Doodle, but don’t expect any favors from now on.”

He turned and strode down the corridor. Oscar stretched out on the cot and stared despairingly at the ceiling. He was through for good.

A few minutes later, there was a light tap of feminine heels on the floor, and when he looked up his secretary, Miss Brown, was standing outside his cell with a guard.

Oscar rose quickly to his feet.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I had to see you,” Miss Brown said. Her pretty face was worried. “You aren’t angry at me for coming, are you?”

“No, not at all,” Oscar said. He felt very glad that she had come. It made him feel, somehow, less alone.

The guard opened the door and closed it when she stepped inside the cell.

“You got about six minutes,” he said and moved down the corridor.

Oscar led Miss Brown to the cot and they sat down, hands clasped together.

“Now tell me why you came, Miss Brown,” Oscar said.

“I know you aren’t guilty, and you can call me Betty,” Miss Brown said, on one breath.

“Thank you — Betty,” Oscar said, rather hesitantly, and then the full impact of her words hit him. He grabbed her shoulders tightly. “You what?”

“I know you aren’t guilty,” Miss Brown spoke in a tense, conspiratorial whisper. “I didn’t realize it until after you’d gone. But that man who worked at the bank yesterday wasn’t you. I know that for certain.”

Oscar felt a flood of relief that left him weak and shaky.

“How did you know?” he asked eagerly.

“Well,” Miss Brown dimpled, “he tried to kiss me.”

“Oh,” Oscar said flatly. He looked at Miss Brown and saw that she was pretty in a soft, pleasant sort of way. And her eyes were a fascinating shade of blue. “What makes you sure I wouldn’t try to kiss you?” he asked moodily.

“Oh, I just know,” Miss Brown said, “and I wanted to tell you I’m going to do everything I can to help prove your innocence.”

“Thank you,” Oscar said. He wanted to say more but he couldn’t. There was a lump in his throat that made talking difficult. He patted her hand awkwardly. “Thank you,” he said again. The guard reappeared at the door. “Time’s up. Got another visitor for you, Doodle,” he said.

“I wonder who this can be,” Oscar said, as Miss Brown walked to the door. He shook hands with her and said, “You will try to come again, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Miss Brown nodded, “I’ll come again. And I’ll be working for you on the outside.”

She squeezed his hand and then stepped through the door and was gone. Oscar walked back to the cot and sat down, but there was a vision of blue eyes still before him. What a blind bat he was! She had worked for him for years and he had never once realized how wonderful and loyal she was.

The guard opened the door again and a medium-sized man wearing dark glasses and baggy, nondescript clothes walked into the cell. Oscar had never seen him before in his life. The stranger’s face was concealed by a bushy red beard and mustache and a slouch hat was pulled down over his eyes.

“You got six minutes,” the guard said, and moved down the corridor again.

Oscar stood up and regarded the stranger uncertainly.

“You are Oscar Doodle?” the stranger asked, and Oscar found his voice strangely familiar.

He nodded.

“But who are you? You have the advantage of me. Have we met before?”

“Yes,” the stranger said, “we met last night.”

He stepped to the barred door and peered up and down the corridor. Satisfied, he swung back to Oscar and smiled.

“Maybe you will recognize me now.”

He tugged at his red beard and it came away from his face. It was attached to his ears by rubber bands.

Oscar drew a surprised breath. The red-bearded stranger was one of his twins from Time, one of his impersonators who had gotten him into this terrible mess.

“Which one are you?” he asked indignantly.

“Sssssh,” his twin said warningly. He glanced cautiously over his shoulder and let his beard slip back into place. “I am Oscar the First, remember? I took over your apartment and Chico.”

“I remember,” said Oscar bitterly. “And how are you enjoying yourself these days?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Oscar the First said in the same cautious voice.

“We’re in a spot.” He glanced about the barred cell and shuddered. “Nothing but the utmost urgency would make me step willingly into one of these confounded jails. You remember I told you I was behind bars at the time I was whisked to this time level by your medium.”

“Yes, I recall that,” Oscar said stonily, “and it didn’t endear you to me. What is it you want now?”

“Help,” Oscar the First said. “We’re desperate. The police are camping at the apartments of both yourself and your hag.”

“Where is Chico? How is Agatha?” Oscar asked.

“Chico is gone,” Oscar the First said, “and your precious Agatha has issued a statement to the press breaking her engagement to you. Of course you shouldn’t feel badly about that.”

Oscar sat down on the edge of the cot, stunned. Chico gone and Agatha — he paused and examined his emotions. No, he didn’t feel bad about Agatha, but Chico—

“Where do you suppose he’s gone?” he asked.

Oscar the First shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s pulled out. Now there are two of us left. There’s been no trace yet of our light-fingered relation. But we’ve got to have money and a place to go. You’re our only contact. You must have some funds stacked away for a rainy day. And we thought you might have a lodge or a cottage somewhere in the country that we could use until all this unpleasantness has blown over.”

“You mean until I’m sent up for a life term in prison,” Oscar said grimly.

Oscar the First smiled behind his red beard.

“I didn’t want to be so blunt,” he said. “Now be a good chap and help us out. You certainly can’t use money where you’re going.”

“No, I can’t,” Oscar said.

He regarded his twin with narrowed eyes. An idea had popped into his head that ordinarily his logical cautious mind would have shunned with horror. But Oscar’s personality was undergoing a subtle change. This situation called for radical measures and Oscar had reached the point where he was jumping at straws.

“It so happens,” he said musingly, “that I have got a bit of money tucked away, and, as you say, it won’t be doing me any good.”

“That’s the spirit” Oscar the First said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“And,” Oscar continued thoughtfully, “possibly you could use part of the money to help me obtain a pardon, not right away, but say in four or five years.”

“The very thing I was thinking of,” his red-bearded ancestor said enthusiastically. “Now the money. Where is it? Where have you got it hidden?”

“It’s right in this cell,” Oscar said. He leaned closer and whispered, “right under this cot.”

“No?” his twin whispered incredulously. His eyes brightened behind the dark glasses. “Why, that’s wonderful! It’ll save us all so much time.”

Oscar glanced cautiously at the door. “I’ll watch for the guard,” he whispered, “and you get the money.”

Oscar the First was grinning from ear to ear.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said, “watch sharply now.”

He dropped to his knees and put his hand under the bed.

“I don’t feel it,” he said.

Oscar stood up and rubbed his fist carefully.

“You will,” he said sweetly.

He swung downward with all his strength at the other’s beautifully exposed jaw, and the sound of his fist meeting bone echoed in the cell with a satisfying smack.

Oscar the First sagged to the floor without a moan.

Oscar surveyed his efforts with a deep, welling sense of triumph. There was something primeval and joyous about striking an enemy to the floor with one blow of a fist.

But he didn’t linger long with his sense of satisfaction. He took one look down the corridor to see that the coast was clear and then returned to the still form of his ancestor and went quickly to work...

In three minutes he stood up, attired in the other’s baggy clothes and wearing his red stage beard, dark glasses and slouch hat. His own clothes he had put on the still unconscious form of Oscar the First. He was smiling as he lifted the limp body from the floor and stretched it out on the cot. The man on the bed was his physical twin, identical in every respect, and attired in Oscar’s discarded clothes. No one would ever suspect that he was not the real and original Oscar Doodle.

He finished the transformation not a minute too soon.

The guard returned and opened the door.

“Time’s up,” he said.

“All right,” Oscar said. “I’m ready.”

He bent down and gripped the unconscious man by the shoulder.

“Don’t give up hope, son,” he said. Shaking his head somberly he left the cell and walked down the corridor with the guard.

“Doodle’s taking it pretty hard,” he said regretfully. He glanced sideways at the guard. The man was walking along stolidly, chewing a wad of tobacco with slow movements of his jaw.

“That’s the way with them thieves,” the guard said, without breaking the rhythm of his chewing. “Don’t think about that when they’re puttin’ other folks’ money in their pockets. Get all sad and pious though when they get behind bars.” He spat forcefully. “Too late then.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Oscar said tactfully, as the guard let him through the last gate.

“’Course I’m right,” the guard said, chewing steadily.

“Yes of course, good night,” Oscar said.

He walked down the steps of the police station trying not to hurry. He forced himself to walk casually, carefully, until he was a block from the building. Then he began to walk rapidly, but he hadn’t taken a dozen steps before a hand grasped his arm.

He stopped and turned guiltily to a man of his own height, who wore a black beard and dark glasses under a floppy slouch hat.

“What luck?” this man asked tensely. “Did he have any money?”

Oscar tried to keep his relief from showing in his face. He realized that this bearded, dark-glassed fellow was his other impersonator, the one who had moved in on Agatha; and he also realized that this man was mistaking him for his confederate, Oscar the First.

“Well?” the fellow repeated impatiently.

Oscar was thinking rapidly. He knew now that the only person who might help him get rid of his impersonators was the person responsible for bringing them here in the first place — Madame Obary.

He couldn’t let this twin get out of his hands. He had one locked securely in jail and that meant there was only one at liberty. If he could somehow find that one — the one who had absconded with the money — he’d have them all, and then maybe Madame Obary could do something to send them back to their own times.

“Come with me,” he said to his black-bearded twin.

“Did he have some money?”

“Yes,” Oscar said. “He told me where to go to get it.”

He hailed a cab and hustled the other inside and gave the driver Miss Brown’s address. This last was like an inspiration from Heaven. He hadn’t a friend in the world, except Miss Brown. If she wouldn’t help him, there was no hope...

Chapter V

She answered the door herself, and her pretty face clouded as she saw the two bearded strangers standing in the hall.

“What do you want?” she asked. “You aren’t selling cough drops, are you?”

“We came from Oscar Doodle,” Oscar said. “He said you were a friend of his.”

“Come in,” Miss Brown said quickly. She closed the door hastily and led them into her small, daintily furnished living room. “What about Oscar?” she asked.

Oscar hesitated. He couldn’t reveal himself or Oscar the Second would be suspicious. So he said, “I can’t tell you everything right now, but we are his friends and he wants us to stay here for a few days with you.”

Miss Brown looked helplessly about the small apartment.

“Well, certainly,” she said, “but I don’t know where I’m going to put you. Maybe you can take my bedroom and I’ll sleep here on the couch.”

“That’s fine,” Oscar said. “Could you show us your bedroom now? We’d like to get to sleep.”

“But it’s only eight o’clock,” Miss Brown said, looking at him in astonishment.

“I know,” Oscar said, “but we’ve had a long day. And we need our rest if we’re going to help Oscar.”

“Come with me then,” Miss Brown said.

She led them into her bedroom, which was prettily furnished in pink and blue. There was one single bed.

“One of you will have to sleep on the floor,” she said.

“That will be fine,” Oscar said, shoving her gently toward the door. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Miss Brown said dubiously. She closed the door and left them alone.

“What was the reason for this?” Oscar the Second said. “And where’s the money?”

“We need a place to stay, don’t we?” Oscar said. “The money,” he lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder at the closed door, “is under the bed.”

“Under the bed?”

Oscar nodded impressively.

“You get it and I’ll keep a watch for the girl.”

Oscar the Second smiled enthusiastically and dropped to his knees.

“This is wonderful,” he said, sticking a hand under the bed.

“It’s going to be,” Oscar said.

“I don’t feel a thing,” Oscar the Second said plaintively.

“Don’t worry, you will,” Oscar said. He gazed tenderly at his fist and swung mightily...

Five minutes later, he opened the door and walked quickly into the living room. He had removed his wig, glasses and hat.

“Oscar!” Betty cried. She scrambled from her chair with a flash of silken legs and ran to his side.

“Betty,” Oscar murmured, taking her in his arms awkwardly.

“How did you get out of jail?” Betty asked wonderingly. “And who are those two men in the bedroom?”

“Sit down, my dear,” Oscar said, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

When he finished his story Betty’s eyes were shining.

“I think you’re just wonderful,” she murmured. Her face suddenly sobered. “But how about the other man in the bedroom? The other twin you’ve been talking about?”

“I bound him securely with the cord from your bathrobe and locked him in the closet,” Oscar said. “He’s on tap until we need him. Now we’ve got to find the one who absconded with the money and then locate Madame Obary. It’s a big job and I haven’t the faintest idea where to start.”

Betty chewed vigorously on her lower lip.

“I think I can find Madame Obary,” she said. “Agatha would know, wouldn’t she?”

Oscar slapped his thigh.

“Of course she would. I hadn’t thought of that. You’re wonderful, Betty.”

“I’ll get her address from Agatha and go to her, tell her you’ve got to see her and bring her back here tonight,” Betty said. “Will that be all right?”

“That much is all right,” Oscar said, “But we still are missing one of the twins. And he happens to be the most important one of the bunch because he has the money.” He shook his head gloomily. “He’s probably a thousand miles from here now.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “Remember he’s a stranger here. He wouldn’t know where to go.”

“By gosh, you might be right,” Oscar said. “But where can I go to look for him?”

“How about your apartment?” Betty asked. “That’s the only place he knew in the city other than Agatha’s. And he certainly wouldn’t go back there.”

“But the police are watching my apartment,” Oscar protested. “I’d be picked up if I went there.”

“Maybe the police have gone. Remember the police think Oscar Doodle is in jail. Possibly they’ve relaxed their watch.”

“It’s worth a chance,” Oscar said, with sudden determination. “I’ll get started immediately.”

“And so will I,” said Betty. “If everything works out all right we’ll be back together, all our problems solved in a few hours.”

“That’s right,” Oscar said brightly, then his cheer faded and he added gloomily, “if everything works out all right.”

Chapter VI

He reached his apartment a half-hour later. To his intense relief the police had gone. They had torn the place upside down, looking for the missing money, but the disrupted apartment was like a glimpse of Heaven to Oscar.

The place was completely empty. He checked through the four small rooms, even looking under the bed, but he found no one.

His thoughts were churning helplessly as he sat down in his easy chair and tried to figure out what to do next. He couldn’t just start looking for his pilfering twin. That would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. The man might be anywhere, and in spite of Betty’s optimism, he still felt that the fellow had left the city and was miles away by this time.

His nerves suddenly jumped as he heard the sound of a key in the door.

He was sitting in the dark and when the door swung open an oblong of light fell across the carpet from the corridor and two figures were silhouetted in the doorway.

One figure was small; the other medium-sized. And the smaller figure had his arm about the other and was half-carrying, half-dragging him into the apartment.

Oscar stepped to the wall and snapped on the light switch. In the sudden glare Chico, his brown-faced, smiling house boy, stood blinking uncomprehendingly at him.

“Chico!” Oscar said sharply.

Chico looked at him in foggy bewilderment, then he lifted the head of the man he was carrying and peered into his features. He stared a long time before he let the head fall soddenly against the man’s chest.

Oscar’s pulses were hammering with excitement! The man with Chico, obviously drunk as a lord, was the third and missing twin, the absconder.

“Who you?” Chico asked abruptly of Oscar, but his voice lacked conviction.

“Chico,” Oscar said sternly. “I am Oscar Doodle, your employer. Where have you been?”

“Hah?” Chico said stupidly. His ever-ready smile had deserted him. He glanced uneasily at the drunken man he was supporting. “Him Doodly,” he said plaintively.

“No,” Oscar said with gentle firmness, “I am Oscar Doodle. That drunken bum is an impostor.”

“Impstoter?” Chico struggled with the unfamiliar word. He shook his brown head anxiously. He was obviously working desperately to make sense out of the situation. He glanced down again at the man he was supporting. “Him not Doodly?”

“That’s right,” Oscar said. “He is not Oscar Doodle. I am Oscar Doodle.”

“Oh,” Chico said and there was relief in his voice. “You Oscar Doodle.”

His smile returned to his face and his black eyes were cheerfully relieved. He dropped the man he was supporting to the floor and nodded to Oscar. “You want warm milk now?”

“No, not now,” Oscar said. “I want you to tell me how you met this fellow.”

Chico frowned and collected his thoughts.

“I come back here,” he said, “find police gone. You in jail.”

He smiled to show that he had a tolerant view of Oscar’s incarceration. “I start to clean up apartment. Then,” he pointed to the sodden figure on the floor, “he come. He drunk. I think him you. He want to go out, get drunk some more. I go along, bring him back when get much drunk. That’s all.”

“Now think carefully, Chico,” Oscar said, “when he came here did he have anything with him? A package or a grip of any sort?”

Chico nodded brightly. He opened the door of the hall closet and lifted out a small black leather bag.

“This,” he said proudly.

Oscar took the bag with hands that were suddenly trembling and opened it. Inside lay a half-dozen stacks of crisp green currency. He counted the money rapidly. Thirty-nine thousand, five-hundred and fifty dollars. The loot was intact except for four-hundred and fifty dollars his pilfering ancestor had squandered during his drunken debauch.

His problems were solving themselves wonderfully. Now if he could just get rid of these two twins everything would be rosy. But that would depend on Madame Obary.

“Get him on his feet,” he said to Chico, pointing to the limp figure on the floor. “We’re taking him for a little ride.”

On the street he hailed a cab and helped Chico to shove their drunken burden inside; then he and Chico clambered in and gave the driver Betty Brown’s address...

Betty met them at the door and Oscar almost fainted with relief as he saw the huge, slovenly figure of Madame Obary over her shoulder. The Madame was seated on the couch, hands clasped loosely in her lap and her bovine features were solemnly expressionless.

She looked up and nodded when she saw him.

“Madame Obary,” Oscar said, when Betty had closed the door and Chico had stretched his burden on the floor, “you’ve got to help me. You got me into this mess and you’ll have to get me out. You brought three of my ancestors to this time level and they’ve completely disrupted my life. Can you send them back where they came from?”

Madame Obary pursed her thick lips thoughtfully.

“I do not know,” she said somberly, “I have never tried. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”

Chico suddenly tittered and pointed at the Madame.

“Crystal ball woman,” he giggled. He spread his arms wide. “Blimp. Hah, hah, hah!”

“Chico!” Oscar cried.

Madame Obary turned a slow ominous eye on Chico.

“And who is this creature?” she thundered.

“My valet,” Oscar said apologetically.

“Remove him from my presence,” she said with an imperious wave of her hand.

Oscar led Chico to the bedroom.

“Stay in here ’til you’re needed,” he said, and closed the door. “He meant no harm,” he explained to Madame Obary.

The Madame sniffed.

“I do not like ridicule.”

“Now please,” Betty said cajolingly, “Chico was just trying to amuse you. Don’t hold that against him. You will help us, won’t you please?”

Madame Obary deliberated for an instant and then stood up from the couch and gestured at Oscar.

“Lie down,” she said, “I will see what I can do; but do not be too hopeful.”

“Thank you,” Betty said fervently. Oscar lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. His heart was hammering with excitement and hope. Madame Obary sat beside him and put her large, soft hand on his forehead.

“Sleep,” she commanded in her powerful, resonant voice.

Oscar felt the familiar sensation of drowsiness crawling over him, but before he could drift into slumber, there was a sudden violent interruption.

The bedroom door swung open and his black-bearded twin strode into the room. Chico followed him, looking bewildered and confused.

“Found man in closet,” he said, glancing apologetically at Oscar’s black-bearded ancestor, who was standing in the center of the room, glaring angrily at Betty and Oscar.

“Man tied up,” he said. “Man mad.”

“You bet I’m mad,” Oscar’s twin snapped. “What kind of a game are you trying to pull?”

Oscar had struggled to a sitting position on the couch and he saw that his ancestor held a large, ugly pair of scissors in his hand and he looked as if he might start using them on the slightest provocation.

“This is unfortunate,” Madame Obary said, wagging her head solemnly. “There is no chance of sending a subject to another time level while he is consciously resisting.”

“You bet I’m consciously resisting,” Oscar’s ancestor said belligerently.

“Oh,” Betty cried, “why don’t you be a good sport? Why don’t you let Madame Obary send you back where you belong? We’d appreciate it ever so much.”

“Isn’t that just dandy,” Black-beard said sarcastically. “Well just get that idea out of your heads. I’m not going to let myself be sent back to my own time. This place isn’t my idea of Heaven, but it’s a darn sight better than my life in the past, so I’m staying right here.”

He glanced down at the drunken, sodden figure of the third impersonator and a bright gleam of cupidity appeared in his eyes.

“So you found the absconder, eh?” he asked. “And I suppose you found the money too?”

Oscar prayed that he wouldn’t see the small black bag in the corner.

“Yes,” he said, “we found it, but it’s not going to do you any good.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” his ancestor said. “Where is it?”

“Don’t tell him, Oscar!” Betty cried. “I don’t intend to,” Oscar said firmly. His black-bearded impersonator stepped suddenly to Betty’s side and swung her about, twisting her arm behind her cruelly. She gave a low cry and her teeth bit into her lower lip. “Don’t tell him!” she gasped.

Oscar came to his feet.

“Let her go!” he shouted.

“Not until you tell me where the money is.”

“All right,” Oscar said, “I’ll tell you. It’s under the couch.” His ancestor looked suspicious, and he added, “I’ll get it for you.”

“No you don’t, I’ll get it myself. I’m not going to fall for any of your tricks.”

He shoved Betty to one side and waved Oscar away from the couch.

“I’ll get it myself,” he said.

He dropped to his knees and felt under the couch with his hand. One side of his jaw was perfectly exposed.

“Where is it?” he growled.

“It’s pretty far back,” Oscar said, stepping forward quietly.

His ancestor grunted and shoved his arm still further under the couch.

“I don’t feel it,” he said.

“You will this,” Oscar said, and slugged him on the side of the jaw with all his strength.

His ancestor flattened out on the floor with a low moan.

“Now,” Oscar said to Madame Obary, “get to work.”

He stretched out on the couch and again the Madame laid her hand on his forehead...

When he awoke Betty was at his side. The apartment was empty. He sat up and looked around dazedly.

“What happened?”

“Everything’s all right again,” Betty said happily. “You’ve been sleeping for an hour or so. Madame Obary left a little while ago, and I sent Chico back to your apartment to get your clothes.”

“And the other two?” Oscar asked.

“They’re gone,” Betty said. “They’re back on their own time level now.”

Oscar sighed with relief, but then a frown appeared on his face.

“What is it?” Betty asked.

“How about the other one?” he said reflectively. “The one the police are holding in jail as Oscar Doodle, the embezzler. What’s going to happen to him?”

Betty shrugged her slim shoulders helplessly.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I hadn’t really thought about that.”

Oscar Was silent a minute, staring intently at the floor, then he looked up at her and smiled.

“I know what’s going to happen to him,” he said, “he’s going to stay right where he is. He told me he was serving a jail sentence in his own time, so it is altogether fitting and just that he complete it here. Anyway if we sent him back to his own time he’d land in jail so it doesn’t make much difference.”

“But what’s going to happen to you?” Betty asked. “You’re Oscar Doodle, but if they send your ancestor to jail for embezzlement, where will that leave you? All your friends will think you’ve been sent to jail. You won’t be able to live as Oscar Doodle again.”

“Yes,” Oscar said, smiling, “I’ve thought of that.” He stood up and he felt a glorious sense of relief. “My friends,” he said, “who are they? They don’t exist. I never had a friend except you and Chico and in my new existence I’ll be able to keep both of you close to me forever.”

“Oscar,” Betty said gently.

He sat beside her and put his arm about her shoulders.

“Don’t you see, darling,” he said, “the Oscar Doodle who slaved at the bank and lived like a mole wasn’t a person at all. He was just a stuffed shirt and I’m heartily glad to be rid of him. There’s only one thing that is worrying me.”

“What is that?” Betty asked.

“My appearance. I still look like Oscar Doodle. People I know might recognize me.”

Betty drew back slightly and studied him with appraising eyes.

“No,” she said, “they’ll never recognize you as that Oscar Doodle. You’ve changed. Something has happened inside you and it shows in your face.

There’s a light in your eyes that was never there before, and when you smile you look almost reckless. You’re another person.”

“I feel like another person,” Oscar said wonderingly.

“But what about the money?” Betty said. “That’s a real problem.”

Oscar frowned thoughtfully.

“We’ll have to keep it,” he said, at last. “It’s the only thing we can do. The bank has been reimbursed by the insurance company, so the depositors won’t suffer. If we returned the money now we’d risk upsetting the whole applecart. No, we’ve got to keep it.”

“But Oscar,” Betty said, “is that exactly honest?”

“I don’t see why not,” Oscar said. “We won’t squander the money on our own pleasure. We’ll invest it in War Bonds. That should certainly make it all right.”

“I see your point,” Betty said, “it’s the only thing we can do, isn’t it?” Oscar nodded solemnly and drew her closer to him and tilted her chin up with his hand.

“With the money that is,” he said, and kissed her firmly.

People of the Pyramids

First published in Fantastic Adventures, December 1941.

“Come, come,” the fat, brown-skinned proprietor of the gaudy little shop in Cairo cried with more enthusiasm than coherence. “Lukka, lukka,” he said proudly, waving a fat arm at the piles of merchandise stacked in the interior of his shop.

Neal Kirby grinned good-naturedly and allowed himself to be half-dragged, half-led into the establishment. He knew he was perfectly secure against the wiles of the fat shop-keeper for he only had one American dollar in his pocket. And his appetite had already staked a claim on that dollar for dinner.

With the proprietor pattering hopefully at his heels he browsed up and down the narrow aisles examining the ropes of cheap beads, the gayly colorful silks and satins and the thousand-and-one sleepy-looking Buddhas, of all sizes and shapes, that stared at him from the shelves.

He was turning to leave when a steely glitter in a corner caught his eye. Looking closely he saw that it was a narrow silver casket with a glass top that had caught the light. Through the glass top he could see a slim stiletto-like knife resting on a pad of red silk. Strangely, it excited his curiosity. He wondered vaguely why a piece of merchandise of such obvious value should be tucked away in the darkest corner of the shop.

“How much?” he asked, pointing to the casket.

The proprietor shook his head until his fat jowls quivered like cups of jelly.

“No sale, no sale,” he said breathlessly. He grabbed Neal by the arm. “Come, come,” he waved to the displays on the opposite side of the shop. “Lukka, lukka.”

Neal shook his head. Stubbornness had been added to his curiosity now. Disregarding the angry squeals of the fat shopkeeper, he bent and picked up the casket. Opening the casket, he almost gasped at the incredible beauty of the knife.

The blade, about eight inches long, gleamed as if it had been delicately forged from pure silver and the handle was formed in the shape of a man’s torso, from some strange red metal that glowed with a fiery luminescence. A small, cunningly chiseled head topped the handle of the knife, and at the neckline where it joined the torso, it was circled by a cluster of small, but perfect diamonds.

Neal whistled in admiration. He was no judge of precious stones and metals but anyone could see that the knife would be worth a Rajah’s ransom. So absorbed was he in the contemplation of the fabulously beautiful knife that he did not hear the sudden sharp exclamation that sounded from the wheezing proprietor. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, but he did hear the quiet, sibilant voice that cut through the silence.

“Give me that knife!”

Neal turned in surprise. Two people stood behind him.

One was a man of medium height with a thin, arrogant face and sandy hair but Neal did not take time to notice anything else about him, for he was too busy staring in admiration at the girl who was with him.

She was tall, with hauntingly blue eyes, and fine blonde hair that cascaded in graceful waves almost to her shoulders. Her slender, charmingly feminine figure was accentuated by the smartly tailored white gabardine suit she wore. She looked cool and fresh and American.

Neal smiled suddenly. Just seeing a girl like this made him feel certain that Cairo was a fine place after all.

“It’s a small world, isn’t it?” he said to her.

She looked anxiously at the man she was with and murmured something under her breath that he didn’t hear. Neal’s smile faded as he looked closely at the girl. There was a hidden fear lurking in the depths of her eyes and he saw that the small handkerchief in her hands had been twisted into a small, crushed ball.

Her companion held out his hand imperiously.

“Will you give me the knife?” he snapped. “Or must I summon the police?”

Neal stiffened at the man’s tone. There was something so definitely insulting in it that he felt a hot flush of anger staining his face. His big hands closed spasmodically over the knife in his hands.

“You might get better results,” he suggested as coolly as he could, “if you’d stop snarling at people and improve your manners. The word ‘please’ can work wonders in a lot of cases. You might look it up some time.”

The man swallowed a reply and his jaw clamped shut. His face had drained white and his small, steel-blue eyes hardened into pin-points of angry light.

“Will you give me that knife?” he almost whispered. His hand slipped slowly into the outside pocket of his coat, where a suspicious bulge showed.

Neal straightened slowly, his eyes narrowing to mere slits. He had not missed the gesture or its significance. In spite of the tenseness of the situation he was able to realize that the incident was strange in every respect. The man’s rage and impatience were wholly unreasonable, completely out of proportion to the trifling affair. The girl was looking imploringly at her companion and her hands were clasped tensely together as if in silent supplication.

The fat, waddling shopkeeper shoved himself between them at that instant, stammering breathless apologies. And as suddenly and abruptly as that the incident was over. The thin man with the arrogant face withdrew his hand from his pocket and went about the business of lighting a cigarette. Neal relaxed slowly. He couldn’t quite convince himself that it was all over. One instant, he knew, the man opposite him was ready to draw his gun and fire. And now he was placidly lighting a cigarette with fingers that were as steady as rocks.

The girl had been talking to the shopkeeper, showing him a withered paper in her hand. Now he turned to Neal, smiling nervously. He pointed to the knife which Neal still held in his hand.

“Give to Missy,” he said imploringly. “Belong her.”

Neal hesitated an instant, and he was aware that the burning eyes of the girl’s companion were resting unwaveringly on him.

“Please,” the girl said simply.

Neal shrugged and handed the girl the knife. As his fingers met hers, he felt paper crackle under his fingers, felt a closely wadded note pushed against his palm. His fingers closed on it automatically and he shoved his fist in his pocket.

“Thank you,” the girl said quickly.

She dropped the brilliantly gleaming knife into her handbag, turned and left the shop. The thin, arrogant, steel-eyed man followed her without a backward glance.

“Go,” the fat shopkeeper said nervously. “Go, please.”

Neal pulled out the wad of paper and spread it flat against his hand. The only information it contained was the name of a hotel and a room number. Neal frowned and shoved it back into his pocket. That didn’t tell him much about the screwy business.

He sauntered from the shop, his thoughts churning futilely. Quiet deliberation was not his most successful accomplishment and he felt queerly impotent and helpless. There was only one thing to do, he decided, after a few moments of anxious cogitation. He pulled the paper that the girl had slipped to him from his pocket and noted the address and room number. Then he walked on whistling.

The soft Egyptian night had dropped its black mantle over Cairo, lending an almost mystic enchantment to the intertwined streets and the murmuring voices of natives. Under the merciful light of a full pale moon, the desert stretches surrounding the silent city, looked cool and calm and inviting. But those who knew the desert were aware of its ruthless reality, its cruelty, its danger.

The lobby of the Hotel Internationale was practically deserted when Neal Kirby strolled across its polished floor and stopped at the desk of the blandly polite young native who acted as clerk and receptionist.

“Is the young lady in 402 in?” he asked.

The clerk nodded.

“Did you have an—”

“She’s expecting me,” Neal said quickly. Turning, he strode to the elevator. He realized disgustedly that he had acted tactlessly. The girl had taken such precautions in slipping him the note that it was obvious she didn’t want it known that he was to see her. He had spoiled that by inquiring for her like a breathless sophomore.

He stepped from the elevator at the fourth floor. The hotel was completely modern, with luxuriously thick carpeting and walls paneled with smooth, dark oak. The heavy rug smothered the sounds of his footsteps as he started down the corridor, looking for 402.

He passed three doors before he found it. Suddenly he began to feel nervous. He paused before the door, his throat strangely dry. Maybe this whole thing was a joke of some sort. Or maybe he had received the note by mistake. A dozen other disturbing thoughts occurred to him, but he dismissed them all with a characteristic shrug. He raised his hand to knock when he heard a sudden scuffling noise from inside the room. It was followed by a quick, gasping cry of terror.

Neal hesitated for only a bare instant and then he grabbed the door-knob, shook it violently.

The door was locked. Neal drew back and lunged at the door, driving his heavy shoulders against its hard surface. A splintering crack sounded and the door swung inward suddenly, almost throwing him off balance.

The room was dark, but there was enough moonlight to show him the shadowy outline of two figures struggling near the window. In spite of the uncertain illumination he recognized one of the figures as the girl he had met in the curio shop. She was struggling helplessly against a man whose both hands were wrapped about her neck.

The man looked up as Neal charged into the room. He dropped the limp body of the girl and sprang toward the window, which opened on the fire escape.

Neal dove across the room and his shoulder drove into the man’s back, slamming him against the wall. He heard a grunt of pain escape the man’s lips, but like an eel, the dark figure squirmed from his grasp and dove for the window.

Neal lunged after him, his right fist swinging in a wild looping arc. It crashed into the side of the man’s head as he scrambled over the window ledge, knocking him out onto the balcony formed by the fire escape.

Neal threw the window open wider, but before he could clamber out his intended victim scrambled to his feet and darted down the steps. Neal had one quick look at the man’s dark terrified features before he disappeared.

Wheeling from the window, Neal stepped quickly across the room and closed the door that he had forced. He groped about until he found a lamp and switched it on. He knew there would be no chance of catching the native who had fled down the fire escape, and the girl might be seriously hurt. She was lying on the floor next to a sofa, unconscious. There were angry red marks on her throat, but he could see the rise and fall of her breast under the light flimsy dressing gown she was wearing-

He lifted her carefully in his arms, stretched her on the sofa and rubbed her hands anxiously. After a moment or so her eyelids flickered and he noticed a touch of color returning to her cheeks. With her long, fine hair framing her white face she looked more like an angel than a human being.

She was breathing more normally now, Neal noticed. He poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the coffee table, tilted her head slightly and poured some of its contents down her throat.

She coughed weakly and opened her eyes. For an instant she stared blankly at him, and then, as recognition came to her, she smiled tremulously.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she murmured. Her hands moved slowly to her throat, touched the abrasions on her skin.

“Don’t talk if it hurts,” Neal said, concerned. “What you need is rest.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” the girl assured him. “I’m still a little frightened, that’s all. Silly of me. I should be getting used to it by now.”

“You mean this has happened before?” Neal asked incredulously.

The girl was silent an instant, and then she turned her eyes full on Neal. In them was mirrored the tragic finality of despair.

“I was wrong to involve you in my troubles,” she said brokenly. “Please go now while there is still time. I — it may be dangerous for you to stay another minute.”

Neal grinned cheerfully and tossed his hat onto an empty chair. He lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling expansively.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he chuckled.

“Oh please,” the girl said miserably. “You think it’s something of a lark, something amusing. Can’t you see I’m serious?

Neal’s face sobered.

“The cute little chap who was trying to strangle you was serious too,” he said drily. “That’s why I’m sticking around until I know what’s up. Funny streak in me. I dislike seeing young girls murdered. I don’t know why. But everybody has their peculiarities and that happens to be mine.”

“Would you like me to start at the beginning?” she asked abruptly.

“Now you’re talking,” Neal grinned. “I may not be of any help, but I’m in your corner from now on.”

The girl relaxed as if a heavy weight had been removed from her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She was silent for a few seconds before resuming.

“My name is Jane Manners,” she said quietly. “My father was a well-known archaeologist. When he died several years ago he left me a manuscript which contained a map and directions for reaching a city somewhere in the Egyptian desert. He had visited the city years before and it had been his consuming ambition to return there before he died. His last wish was that I would go there and complete the archaeological work he had begun. I didn’t have the necessary funds so I put the trip off. Then I received an offer of help. It came from an Austrian, Max Zaraf, who said that he had known my father in Egypt.”

“Was he the gent I met today?” Neal interrupted.

“Yes. He financed the expedition. At first I was delighted by the assistance, but things have happened which make me believe I made a very serious mistake.”

“What sort of things?” Neal asked. “In the first place,” Jane answered, “he insisted that I let him keep the map. I gave it to him without hesitation. That same night I was almost killed by a heavy piece of iron that dropped from the deck above me. The officers on the boat were unable to explain the accident. Again, three nights later, I was almost killed by a knife hurled through my porthole. It missed me by inches.”

Neal whistled silently.

“Why didn’t you ask Zaraf to return the map to you and call the whole deal off?”

Jane shook her head miserably.

“I wasn’t sure he had anything to do with it. I’m not yet, for that matter. And if I back out I may never get another opportunity to carry out Dad’s last wishes.”

Neal glanced down at his knuckles. “Did it occur to you that it was too late to back out? That is, if Zaraf is the little dark boy in the woodpile. If he made two attempts on your life he certainly wouldn’t give you back the map now and let you walk out on him at this late date. If you tried you’d just be sealing your own death warrant.”

“I thought of that,” Jane answered. “There wasn’t anything to do but go along with him and hope for the best.”

“Which won’t be any too good, if I’m any judge of character,” Neal said drily. “But what about the knife you got at the curio shop? How does that fit into the picture?”

“I don’t know,” Jane answered, frowning. “In Dad’s manuscript he made it very clear that before starting the trip I should stop here in Cairo and pick up that knife. He left it here on his last trip. It must be important or he wouldn’t have been so insistent about it. The shopkeeper knew him and had promised to keep the knife until he returned for it, or sent for it. The paper which I showed the shopkeeper was written by Dad and was a sort of a claim-check on the knife.”

“One more question,” Neal grinned. “How did you happen to pick me for a Boy Scout?”

The girl smiled slightly.

“Maybe,” she answered, “because you look like a Boy Scout. I scribbled my address on a piece of paper while you and Max were glaring at each other in the curio shop. Afterward I told myself that I had acted foolishly, that you’d never bother to investigate a silly, impulsive gesture like that.”

“That was a serious mistake in judgment,” Neal told her lightly.

As he finished speaking a hinge creaked faintly behind him. Then a suave icy voice said:

“A very serious mistake, indeed!”

Neal didn’t turn. Instead he watched Jane Manners. Her eyes looking over his shoulders were filled with a sudden, shocked fear.

“Max!” she whispered.

Neal stood up and turned slowly. Unconsciously his big hands tightened into hard, blocky fists. In the doorway, smiling without humor, stood Max Zaraf. The trailing smoke from the cigarette in his hand curled up past his lean, saturnine face, dimming slightly the cold, deadly glitter of his eyes. But Neal, watching the man closely, was sure there was disappointment in those eyes. Disappointment and a slight trace of uncertainty.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Zaraf asked softly, ignoring Neal.

Neal grinned, a tight mirthless grin. Zaraf acted as if he hadn’t been expecting to find things quite as they were.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” Neal asked, before Jane could answer.

Zaraf shrugged and stepped into the room. His eyes flicked meaningly to the shattered lock of the door.

“Logical question, isn’t it?” he asked silkily. “Door forced open. Room upset. A tempestuous young American violating the privacy of a young woman’s room. It all adds up, does it not?”

“Max!” Jane said sharply. “You’re being insulting.

“You’re also being very careless of your health,” Neal said pointedly.

Zaraf turned slightly and looked straight at Neal. The slight smile vanished from his features. Neal saw a new, wary look creep into Zaraf’s cold eyes, and he realized that the man had just recognized him as the American he had encountered at the curio shop.

“What is your game, my young friend?” he asked coolly. “This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. If it is, let me assure you that it might be a most unlucky one — for you.”

“It is not a coincidence,” Jane said quietly. “I asked Mister—” she faltered, and Neal realized that he hadn’t told her his name.

“Kirby,” he said quickly. “Neal Kirby. You must have forgot.”

“Thank you,” Jane said gratefully. “I asked Mr. Kirby to come here,” she resumed, “because I thought I might need him.”

“For what?” Zaraf asked.

Neal wondered what reason the girl would give for asking him here. To tell the truth would reveal to Zaraf her suspicions concerning him. He looked at her, and her eyes met his in an imploring glance, before she faced Zaraf. Her slender body stiffened and her chin raised slightly as she said:

“I have hired Mr. Kirby,” she said clearly, “as consulting archaeologist. He will leave with us tomorrow morning.”

Zaraf’s steely calm was shaken. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked hoarsely.

Neal stared at Jane in amazement. It was preposterous, out of the question, completely unthinkable. He didn’t know a thing about archaeology in the first place, and secondly, why should he be wandering over the desert looking for lost cities? It didn’t make sense.

Then he looked at Jane, and suddenly it did make sense. For some crazy reason it became the most logical thing in the world for him to go anywhere, do anything this girl wanted. She was looking at him beseechingly, hope and confidence shining in her eyes.

He turned to Zaraf, smiling faintly at the man’s obvious consternation.

“That’s right,” he said cheerfully. “I’m the new archaeologist. I’m not such a hot archaeologist, but I’m a pretty good shot and I hear the desert is just full of snakes and rats.”

Zaraf struggled to restrain his anger. His cheeks were touched with red and his cold eyes were twin pools of hate. But his voice was as soft as silk as he said:

“You have to shoot a snake before it stings you. Remember that my young friend.” He turned then, and with a mocking bow to the girl, left the room.

“Lovely fellow,” Neal murmured.

“He’s dangerous and cruel,” Jane said worriedly. “I–I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. I have a terrible feeling that I’ll hate myself for it. If anything should happen to you, I’d feel as if it were my fault.”

Neal picked up his hat and smiled down at her.

“Forget it,” he said. He sauntered to the door, and grinned back at her. “I wasn’t kidding, you know, when I told our chum that I was a pretty good shot. The fact is I’m a damn good shot. See you tomorrow.”

The tiny caravan of four camels and three attendants wound its way from Cairo the following day, as the blazing morning sun served notice that the day would be scorching hot.

Each camel carried a passenger, and was led by a native attendant at the end of a stout rope. The fourth camel carried huge leather sacks of water. It was roped to the last camel in the train and clumped awkwardly along, apparently unimpressed by the fact that it carried the most precious commodity of the desert — water.

On the lead camel rode Max Zaraf. Behind him rode Jane Manners and bringing up the rear was Neal Kirby, swaying awkwardly on his lurching steed, and feeling uncomfortable and strange in his pith helmet and breeches and boots.

Zaraf had the map in his possession and gave the directions of travel to the native guides. For two days the trip was monotonously uneventful, varying little in detail from hour to hour. They traveled for the most part in the cool of the morning and evening and laid up during the blistering heat of the day. The terrain was endlessly unchanging. Slight rises of sand gave way to sloping valleys that led only to still another hill.

On the evening of the third day Zaraf waved them to a stop and Neal climbed stiffly from his camel, glad to ease his muscles after a hard four-hour stretch. He walked through the soft sifting sand and assisted Jane Manners to alight. Zaraf was walking back toward them from his camel. They had stopped just below the summit of a rather high hill, and the fine top sand was blowing down on them in swirling, uncomfortable clouds.

“We stop here,” Zaraf announced, coming up to them.

“Here?” Neal echoed. “Let’s go over the hill to the valley. We’ll get out of this wind that way.”

The native drivers, dark-skinned and inscrutable, waited stolidly for orders. They were a proud, silent breed of men, neither volunteering information, nor expecting it. As long as they received their money for the day’s work, it didn’t matter what their white-skinned masters did.

Zaraf glared bale fully at Neal.

“I have said we will stop here,” he repeated angrily. “I’m deciding on our course and if I decide to stop here it’s because I have excellent reasons for doing so.”

Neal shrugged. It seemed a small matter to argue about. Maybe Zaraf did have a good reason for stopping here.

“Okay,” he said, “if you can stand the sand I guess Jane and I can put up with it.”

Zaraf turned without a word and walked back to his camel. The natives went to work building a shelter, and preparing the evening meal. The camels, relieved of their packs, settled placidly down on their haunches, like so many quiet cows.

Darkness fell swiftly. Neal said good-night to Jane and turned in early. The fires burned out in a few hours and before the moon came up the tiny camp was slumbering.

Neal awoke the following morning as the first rays of the rising sun slanted into his eyes. He blinked sleepily and yawned. His first thought was of water. Every morning he awoke thirsty, for the desert’s searing heat dried out the moisture in his body as he slept. He climbed to his feet, stuck his feet into his boots and pulled on his shirt. Then he crawled out of the narrow pup tent, straightened up and looked around.

For an instant he stared about unbelievingly. The camels and the native guides were nowhere in sight. The black ashes of the evening’s fire still showed as cancerous spots against the whiteness of the sand, but the natives’ sleeping gear and packs — and more vital, the camels — w ere vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them.

For seconds Neal was too stupefied to act. All he could do was stare in numbed bewilderment at the bleak expanse of the desert.

When his dazed senses finally recovered, he wheeled and charged toward the other two sleeping tents.

“Zaraf! Jane!” he shouted. “On your feet. Our guides have pulled a fade-out with the equipment and camels.”

He was so excited that he did not notice the abysmal silence that seemed to stretch over the desert like a Vast tight blanket.

Reaching Zaraf’s tent he jerked open the flap. He opened his mouth but the excited words on his lips died there. For Zaraf’s sleeping pad was undisturbed. It had obviously not been used that night.

Neal felt the cold of panic close over his heart. For a silent, timeless instant he stared incredulously at Zaraf’s empty tent — then he was racing madly through the thick sand toward Jane’s tent. He shouted her name wildly and the hills threw back the mockery of an echo.

He ripped open the flap without waiting for an answer to his shout. One glance showed him it was empty. The sleeping pad had been used, for it was twisted and tossed into a jumbled heap. Neal’s eyes picked quickly about the interior, noticing the generally disarrayed condition of the sleeping articles and clothes. One corner of the tent sagged drunkenly inward, and he could see that the rope and peg had pulled out of place. Everything pointed to a struggle or rough house of some sort. Neal stood up, a frantic fear clawing at his attempted calmness. As far as his eye could reach, the desert sands spread in a never-varying, never-ending expanse of sun and heat.

“Jane!” he shouted desperately.

“Jane!... Jane!”

The echo mocked him.

Neal peered into Jane’s tent again. A comb and hair brush were lying on the canvas floor, along with her wrist watch and a ring she usually wore. Neal’s frown deepened. Jane wouldn’t have left things like that if — if—

One inevitable conclusion forced itself on him. Zaraf had taken Jane by force, and with the camels and water, deserted in the dark of the night. There was no other conclusion possible. Neal realized then, with sickening abruptness, that in all probability this had been in Zaraf’s mind from the outset.

Neal rested on his haunches in Jane’s tent and thought carefully for a few moments. He had no water, no food and no means of transportation. His revolver had three shots left in it. The rest of the ammunition was in the camel packs. Except for the sun he had not the slightest means of gauging direction or ascertaining a definite course even if he had one to follow.

Approximately, he had thirty-six hours to live.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. The pleasantness had gone from his features; leaving his face a stiff, expressionless mask. “It’s a slim chance, but I’ll take it. I may not find you, Max Zaraf but God help you if I do!”

He was crawling from Jane’s tent when his hand touched the rent in the canvas. It was an inch-long rip close to the flap opening.

Obeying a strange impulse, Neal examined it closely. He shoved his finger through the tear and wiggled it about in the warm sand beneath the flooring. Suddenly his finger touched something that was not sand. Something that was as cool and hard and smooth as — steel!

Quickly Neal ripped the canvas flooring aside and dug into the sand with both hands. A second later he drew from the sand a glittering object which he recognized instantly.

It was the be-jeweled knife which he had accidently stumbled on in the curio shop in Cairo. He recognized it instantly by the handle, formed as a human torso, and the human head which topped it. The flashing necklace of diamonds scintillated brilliantly in the dim light of the tent.

Neal laughed bitterly and shoved it into his pocket. It was worth a great amount of money, men had probably fought and died over it, but it couldn’t buy him a drop of water now.

He retrieved his pith helmet from his own tent and started out. Plowing awkwardly through the burning sand, he headed for the top of the hill, that led, he knew with bitter irony, to just another hill. But still he had to keep on. There was something inside of him, as strong as life itself, which would drive him on until...

Neal Kirby had given himself thirty-six hours of life. Now, he realized vaguely, as he lurched forward, he was twelve hours past that limit already. Living on borrowed time so to speak. His face was matted with sand-clogged beard and his red-rimmed eyes were like hot points of fire in the blackness of his face.

For two days he had staggered through the blinding heat of the desert without food, without water. He had passed the limits of human endurance, but still he lurched on, some inner voice lashing him forward when his flagging body would quit.

He fell often. Sometimes he lay stretched on the burning sands for minutes before he could crawl back to his feet and stagger on again.

It was almost noon, now, and the sun seemed to be hanging suspended in the sky about a hundred feet above his aching head. He could actually feel the weight of the heat settling on him like a dense, smothering pall. Overhead soaring vultures were converging on his stumbling figure in ever narrowing circles.

Staggering over the top of a hill Neal saw the first sight to relieve the deadly monotony of the desert. Just what it was he couldn’t tell, but it looked like a bundle of rags thrown together in a pile at the foot of the slight rise. With a strange flickering hope burning in his breast, Neal made a pathetic effort to run. He fell and slid most of the way, but at the foot of the hill he regained his feet and staggered on. Suddenly from the cluttered dark bundles which he had seen there arose a small cloud of birds, their hideously flapping wings carrying them away from this one other thing on the desert that lived beside themselves.

Neal stopped short, almost gagging. He was close enough to recognize the bundles now as three human forms. Numbly he approached them. Sprawled on the sand with bullet holes in their heads, were the three native guides who had accompanied Zaraf into the desert. Neal stared at them for seconds in dumb silence. Zaraf’s treachery had not ended with deserting him in the desert. Here was mute testimony of that.

In spite of everything Neal felt a vicious satisfaction course through him. The bodies of the native guides were unmistakable signposts telling him that he was at least on the right track. The canteens of the native guides were empty so he staggered on again, somehow strengthened by the realization that he couldn’t be many hours behind Jane and Zaraf.

An hour later, he fell. He was on top of another hill overlooking a broad, sloping valley, identical to the other interminable valleys he had crossed, except that this one seemed longer and wider than most of the others. For a half-hour he lay on his stomach trying to find the will and the strength to go on. He heard a faint whirr above and turned weakly just as a huge cadaverous vulture was settling on him. With a hoarse croak of fright the bird veered off and glided down into the valley. Neal hoisted himself painfully to his knees and drew his gun. Why he was so bent on killing the bird he couldn’t have told himself. He rested the revolver on his forearm and sighted carefully. The bird was gliding into the valley soaring within six feet of the ground when Neal fired.

He missed. The bird flapped great wings and climbed into the sky to resume his endless circling. But a strange reverberating echo had started across the valley. It magnified the report of the pistol a dozen times until it seemed as if mighty hammers were drumming maddeningly on the ground. Neal listened wonderingly.

Suddenly he noticed a peculiar distortion of the heat waves that were dancing in front of his eyes. Their gossamer lightness and fantastically odd shapes were dissolving and reassorting themselves before his eyes. It was as if all the light waves and heat waves of the valley were broken to bits by the crescendoing clamor of the echoes which were booming across the valley.

The entire atmosphere of the valley, he noticed, was vibrating visibly. Crazy lances of light shot into the sky and the distorted refractions of sun and heat waves merged together into what looked like solid blocks of light. In the center of the valley there appeared a shining shaft of pure white light that was growing wider by the second.

Neal climbed shakily to his feet, stunned.

The shaft continued to widen and he saw then that it was not composed of light, but some material that looked like white marble.

The thunderous drumming of the echo culminated in one great crash that seemed mighty enough to shatter the heavens. Then silence settled oppressively over the valley.

The white shaft of marble was widening swiftly now, as if some vast invisible curtain was being drawn back in front of it. Neal watched in fascination as a mighty structure of marble appeared before his eyes, filling the entire valley and almost piercing the clouds with its majestic peak of glittering white. It was formed in the shape of a pyramid, alabaster white, incredibly huge.

The silence was complete now and the fantastic distortions of the atmosphere had ceased. The valley was quiet and tranquil as when he first saw it. Everything was the same except for the appearance of the magnificent white pyramid towering into the heavens.

Neal sagged to his knees. If it was a mirage, it was the most impressive and authentic he’d ever heard of. He was still looking at the gigantic pyramid when he saw the orange bolt of flame flash from its base. It seemed a whip of flame with a large ball of some brightly burning matter attached to it. When he saw that it was heading for him he tried to run, as a man runs from the unknown, but it was too late. Something caressed the back of his head like a hot breath and he stumbled onto his face. The next instant a smothering blanket of blackness settled over him and everything faded out abruptly.

When Neal came to he was lying on a narrow cot in a small room.

There were no windows that he could see, only one small opening that might be a door. He struggled to a sitting position on the cot. The first thing he realized was that he wasn’t thirsty. His lips were still cracked and tender, but he knew from their feel that water had passed over them. His hand touched his matted three-day beard experimentally, and his eyes traveled in mild disgust over his dirty, ragged breeches and scuffed boots.

He leaned back and wondered where he was. Thinking accurately was a difficult proposition. His conscious memory was that of a fantastic white pyramid which had materialized before him on the desert. Before that he had been close on the trail of Max Zaraf and Jane Manners. That thought jolted him.

He climbed to his feet and looked around. The walls were of a peculiar porous material and they seemed to be the source of the pale, glareless illumination that flooded the tiny room. There was no furniture other than the narrow cot, and the small door was locked in some manner from the outside. The problem of getting out, he decided, was not going to be easy.

He sank back onto the cot despairingly. All he could do was wait. An hour passed before he heard a clicking on the outside of the door. Then it swung inward. Neal saw a highly polished boot, white whipcord breeches, and then the tall, gaunt figure of Max Zaraf filled the narrow doorway. His freshly shaven features were touched with a mocking smile and his cold eyes gleamed with sardonic amusement.

“This is a pleasure I hadn’t counted on,” he said, smiling.

For a stunned instant Neal was too dazed to speak. Even in his astonishment, however, one thing was obvious. Zaraf was in the saddle now or he wouldn’t be so completely cool and nonchalant. Every instinct in his body urged him to hurl himself at Zaraf’s relaxed figure and throttle the life from the man, but a bump of common sense warned him to proceed cautiously and wait for an opportunity.

“I don’t imagine you had counted on seeing me again,” he said as easily as he could. “Most men stranded in the desert die there.”

“But you didn’t,” Zaraf smiled. “How persistent of you.”

“I had something to live for,” Neal answered quietly.

Zaraf shrugged.

“The past is dead,” he said, still smiling. “Since you lived through the desert I might give you the chance to continue living. However, that is up to you. If you are willing to do as I say, it can be arranged. If not,” he spread his hands in an expressive gesture, “your gallant fight through the desert will be of no avail.”

“It is my great pleasure,” Neal said recklessly, “to tell you to go to hell. If I had nine lives I’d sacrifice ’em all before I’d lower myself to bargain with a treacherous, rotten snake like you.” Zaraf continued to smile, but two hot flags of color fluttered in his cheeks.

“I came here to offer you a chance for your life. You could have helped me here but that is not to be. For your information we are approximately five hundred feet underground right now. We are in the lost city which Professor Manners discovered. It was never actually a lost city, but rather a hidden city. A strange race of people have developed here, many of them childishly simple in many ways. It is to be my privilege to teach them the benefits of commercialization. You might have helped me and done very well for yourself. It was only an accident that you discovered the secret of the pyramid, but it is an accident which might have been profitable to you.” He smiled blandly down at Neal. “Many of the charmingly simple people love pageantry and drama so I’ll have to devise a spectacular manner in which to usher you into the Great Beyond.”

“Where is Jane?” Neal asked suddenly.

“Ahh,” Zaraf smiled. “That worries you, does it? Well Jane is not too happy, but I have strong hopes that under my persuasive technique I can make her learn to enjoy the existence I’ve planned for her.”

As he finished speaking he bowed slightly and stepped through the door. It closed immediately behind him.

Neal paced the narrow room nervously for the next hour. The realization that Jane was near him, possibly within a few hundred feet of him, was maddening. Maddening too, was the realization that she was in Zaraf’s hands, helpless. Another hour, as nearly as he could judge, had passed when he heard the faint click of the lock. He paused and watched the door carefully. It swung inward, an inch at a time, until it stood open.

Neal doubled his fists and spread his legs. If a chance to smash his way out of this cell presented itself he was going to grab it.

Seconds later a young girl stepped cautiously into the room. Her skin was a pallid white in color and her large eyes were twin mirrors of fright. She was small and her thin body was trembling under the loose white garment she wore. Her hair was long, and would have been considered beautiful, were it not so dull and lustreless.

Neal unclenched his fists slowly. He had been prepared for just about anything, but this peculiar looking, frightened girl stopped him completely. Her eyes were on his now, and she seemed trying desperately to make him understand something. Finally she held her fingers over her mouth and Neal gathered that she wanted him to keep silent.

Then she reached out and took his hand in her own and pointed through the doorway with her other hand. Her meaning was clear enough to Neal. She wanted him to follow her, but why? Neal didn’t stop to argue the question with himself. It might be a trap, but it wasn’t likely that they would go to such elaborate lengths to lure him from the cell. Anyway it was better than doing nothing. He decided to follow the girl.

“Lead on, sister,” he whispered. “If you’re on the level, God bless you.”

The girl led him into the corridor that flanked the room in which he had been confined. Looking about he could tell nothing about where he was or where he was going. The walls were blue, and of the same porous composition that constituted the walls of the room he had just left. The corridor stretched ahead endlessly and Neal noticed that every six feet or so a door was built into the wall, identical with the one that led to the room which he had just left. The ceiling was high and vaulted, but was without ornamentation of any sort.

The girl crept softly ahead of him, glancing frequently back to see that he was still following. In another hundred feet they turned at right angles and followed another corridor. For fifteen or twenty minutes they continued, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine passages that interlaced each other at odd angles. Finally the girl stopped at a door, that seemed to Neal identical to the hundreds of others they had passed, and pressed her ear against its surface.

After a silent interval she opened the door cautiously and motioned for Neal to go in. Neal hesitated an instant. If there was anything phoney about the set-up this was where the pay-off would be. With a mental shrug he stepped over the threshold and into the room.

“Neal, darling!” a wonderfully familiar voice cried.

“Jane!” Neal whispered unbelievingly. For an instant he stood rooted to the spot, too amazed to move. This had been the farthest thing from his thoughts. She was standing at the opposite side of the room, and in her eyes was relief and joy that made his heart pound faster. She was wearing a loose flowing gown of white and it gave her blonde beauty an almost ethereal quality.

Recovering he crossed to her, took her hands in his.

“Honey,” he said fervently, “you’re the most welcome sight I’ve seen in all my life. Are you all right? Has that swine done anything to you?”

“I’m all right,” she said breathlessly. “I heard that you had been brought here and the little girl who is my attendant was willing to take a message to you. Finally she thought she could bring you here easier. She’s watching in the hall now so we have a few minutes to talk.”

“What’s this all about?” Neal asked. “Where are we?”

“We’re in the city my father discovered,” she answered. “It’s underground. A whole tribe of people — offshoots of some highly cultivated desert group — built it as a retreat against their more savage neighbors centuries ago. Here they have progressed amazingly well along certain lines, in electricity for instance, but in other fields they are childishly ignorant.

“Zaraf knew my father years ago and knew that he made this discovery. So his offer to help me was because he wanted access to this city for purposes of exploitation. We arrived here just a few days ahead of you, but fortunately for Zaraf, an evil element of the natives has been planning a revolution against the established ruling system. Being an opportunist Zaraf jumped right in with the revolters and helped them overthrow their ruler.”

“And that makes him ace-high with the new management,” Neal said reflectively.

Jane nodded.

“He told me all his plans the day after he kidnaped me and left you stranded in the desert. He was sure you were out of the picture forever. He intends to work himself into a position of power, regiment these natives, sell their produce and electrical equipment to the highest bidders. He must be stopped, Neal, he must. These natives are, for the most part, simple and kindly, but they’re easily influenced by white people because they worshipped my father. He was very kind and good to them during the years he stayed here, and Zaraf is trading on that.”

“Our big job,” Neal said, “is to get out of here as fast as we can. Do you have any idea of the size of this place? Or where we are now in relation to the nearest exit?”

Jane shook her head.

“I’m completely lost,” she confessed. “I know, however, that we are in one of the larger sleeping sections now. Everyone is up at the throne hall at this time to hear the new instructions from the new ruler. His name is Horjak. That’s why it was safe to bring you here through the halls. All the rooms are deserted now. Most of the natives here aren’t sympathetic with the new regime, but they are helpless because they have no leader or weapons.”

Neal started to speak but a shrill terrified shriek from beyond the door interrupted him. It was followed instantly by a loud banging on the panels.

Neal heard a harsh voice snapping commands and he knew that Zaraf was outside.

Jane was clinging to his arm desperately.

“You’ve got to get out of here, darling,” she cried.

This was the grim truth, Neal admitted, but there was no other exit from the room. He disengaged Jane’s frantic grip on his arm and shoved her into a corner, just as the door crashed inword.

Three small, but heavily muscled men, with the same pallid expression and lusterless hair of the young native girl, spilled into the room. They wore crimson tunics that dropped to the middle of their thighs and sandals with soft spongy soles. They sprang at Neal with a concerted ferocity that amazed him. The first soldier went down under a sledge hammer right hook that carried all of Neal’s heavy shoulder behind it. But before he could swing again the other two grabbed his arms. More of the crimson-tuniced guards poured into the room and the struggle was over. Panting, he was dragged from the room into the corridor to face the coldy sneering presence of Max Zaraf.

“I gave you your chance,” Zaraf snapped. “You refused it. Now you can accept your alternate choice.” He motioned imperiously to the guards. “To the throne room. Quickly!”

Before the guards could move to obey his order Jane rushed into the corridor and blocked their path with outstretched hands.

“You can’t do this,” she cried to Zaraf. “I won’t let you.”

Zaraf smiled at her, cynically.

“Since you are so perturbed as to his fate,” he said silkily, “I think it would be interesting if you would witness the execution yourself. There’s nothing like the presence of a lovely woman to inspire a man to die a hero’s death.” He nodded to two of the guards. “Take her along.”

The husky, crimson-tuniced guards sprang to obey, and after a brief, unequal struggle, the girl was carried away after Neal.

The throne room was a vast hall lined with tier upon tier of seats extending up to the highest reaches of the amphitheater. In the center of the throne room a huge unadorned dias was erected and on it sprawled a corpulent figure with an overly large head and dense stupid features.

Neal saw all this in one quick glance as he was shoved through a lower tier aisle and led to the large oval enclosure that faced the throne. The entire hall was brilliantly illuminated by the same sort of indirect lighting he had noticed before. Standing next to the figure on the throne was Max Zaraf, a gloating smile of anticipation on his face.

The throne room was quiet, but the tiers of seats were jammed with the native population of the underground city. Neal noticed the silence particularly. It was the brooding silence of a death block before an execution.

Zaraf bowed slightly to the figure on the dias and stepped down to face Neal.

“Very shortly,” he said, “you are going to die in a quite spectacular manner. You are a fool and you deserve it. These people are incredibly brilliant in many things, many things which the outside world will pay steeply for. Their invisibility screen with which they surround their central pyramid is one instance. Your pistol shot accidentally disrupted the force field and thus you accidentally stumbled onto the pyramid.

“The blue death, which they can send for fifty feet or fifty miles is one of the most destructive weapons the world will ever know. In your case they used a light charge which knocked you out, but they can use it to wipe out whole cities.

“Things like that are more valuable than diamonds in the world today. With clever exploitation who knows how far I can go?” Zaraf smiled and there was a sinister ugliness in the effort. “You, however, Mr. Meddler are not going any farther at all. At my demand Horjak, the new ruler, has ordered your execution. It will be followed by wholesale executions of those who oppose the reign of Horjak.”

“A very nice set-up,” Neal said quietly. “Those you don’t approve of, or who don’t approve of you, just get wiped out. It may work, Zaraf, but you’ll find living with yourself quite a job.”

“I can stand it, I think,” Zaraf chuckled mirthlessly. “Now to get down to business. My real reason in coming down here was to point out the highly ingenious method I have selected for your elimination.”

He pointed to a rack-like affair that was raised from the floor six or seven feet.

“In words of one syllable,” Zaraf continued with relish, “you will be spread-eagled there, tied hand and foot to each of the four posts. Then at a signal from me, the executioner cuts a very slender cord and the most amazing thing happens.”

He pointed up to the right and left of the rack, and Neal saw for the first time that a half dozen huge knives were suspended by ropes from the ceiling, parallel to the rack.

“The knives swing down,” Zaraf said softly. “They are heavy and will travel very fast. They will pass through your suspended body and that will be that! Your wrists and ankles will still be attached to the posts but the rest of your body will be sliced as neatly as a sausage. Clever, isn’t it?”

In Spite of himself, Neal felt a horrible revulsion crawling over him. To die was one thing. But to die like a butchered hog in front of a howling mob of savages was quite another.

His eyes circled the arena desperately. Every exit was guarded with a dozen men, every aisle clogged with spectators. His gaze swung back to Zaraf and he used every ounce of will power in his control to force a smile over his features.

“Am I supposed to be frightened?” he asked softly. “Am I supposed to be trembling and begging for mercy now? Sorry to disappoint you, Zaraf, but it doesn’t worry me that much.”

Zaraf’s face flushed an angry red, but without another word, he turned and marched up the steps to the dais. Neal’s eyes followed him and then he saw Jane.

Pale and regal, she was standing next to the dais, her arms bound behind her. Neal felt a cold sweat break out on his body. They couldn’t let her watch. It wasn’t human.

Zaraf turned and smiled down at Neal.

“Remember to be your most heroic,” he said mockingly. “We have distinguished company present.”

The crimson-tuniced guards stepped forward now and grabbed Neal by the arms. His eyes were on Jane, and he hardly felt them shoving him toward the rack. He was trying desperately, frantically to tell her with his eyes that he loved her and would always love her, wherever he might be. He had never said the things he wanted to say to her and this was his last opportunity.

Suddenly a clear, terrible scream of anguish sounded through the vast, packed throne room.

“You can’t! You can’t! Let me die with him!” It was Jane sobbing and crying frantically, stumbling down the steps of the dais toward the execution rack.

“You fool!” shouted Zaraf. “Come back here!”

Leaping from his chair he plunged down the steps after her. Shouts and yells sounded through the throne room, as the natives lent their voices to the excitement.

Neal turned at Jane’s scream. The two guards holding him relaxed their grip in the general confusion. With a sudden writhing twist Neal was free. He was weakened from his exposure in the desert, but his right hook was still a dangerous weapon. His first swing caught the guard off balance and dumped him in a complete somersault to the ground. Two more guards rushed at him, but he sidestepped them with a quick leap. As he landed he felt something jab into his thigh with an agonizing pain. Instinctively his hand moved to the spot, his fingers touched a slim, hard object close to his thigh. A surge of hope shot through him, not that he could hope to win, but that at least he could put up an excellent account for himself.

The two guards were closing in on him now, but before they could grab him, his hand flashed from his pocket grasping the strange, diamond-studded knife that he had first seen in the Cairo curio shop and secondly, when he had found it under the canvas flooring of Jane’s tent. He had shoved it into his pocket then and forgotten it. His hand closed about the torso-handle of the knife now, and the diamond necklace that topped the torso flashed in a thousand scintillating sparkles as he drew his arm back to slash out at the two guards who were pressing him.

But his arm did not fall! It remained rigidly aloft as though frozen.

For the two guards were staring at the knife, fearfully, tremblingly. Hoarse, guttural pleas sounded inarticulately from their throats as they backed away from him, terror-stricken. When they were eight feet from him they suddenly hurled themselves to the floor and grovelled there, mouthing strange incantations. Neal wheeled, and as he flashed the knife about his head, the other guards dropped to their knees, their voices blending with the first two guards.

Taking advantage of this sudden, but inexplicable break, Neal leaped toward the base of the dais where Jane was struggling helplessly with Zaraf.

Horjak, the new ruler, saw Neal charge toward the dais brandishing the scintillating knife in his hand like an avenging angel. With a soft moan of terror he sank to his knees, babbling incoherently.

Zaraf flung Jane to one side and leaped past Neal. He sprinted to the oval enclosure where the guards were moaning and grovelling on their faces.

“Get up!” he screamed. “Get up you yellow hounds. Grab the prisoner and tear him apart with your hands. Get up! Get up!”

But he might have been talking to lumps of clay or sodden logs for all the attention the guards paid his hysterical commands. There was a swelling moaning noise coming now from the rows of packed seats. On their knees and on their faces the natives moaned and chanted their mysterious mumbling incantations.

Neal clasped Jane to him and slashed her bonds with the glittering knife, then he jumped from the dais and started after Zaraf.

Zaraf saw him coming. With one last frantic scream at the oblivious natives, he turned blindly and dashed under the rack. His foot caught on a silken cord and hurled him to the ground, but he clambered quickly to his feet.

Then he screamed — madly and hysterically, once.

Neal saw it happen, saw the complete, incredibly horrible death by which Max Zaraf paid for his sins.

His foot had tripped the knife release under the rack, and when he sprang to his feet, the heavy, speeding knives — poised for Neal’s execution — flashed downward with the devastating force of razor-sharp cleavers. Twelve blades there were, and each one found at least part of its target.

Shaken, Neal made his way to Jane’s side. She was slumped at the foot of the dais, sobbing. He slipped his arm around her shoulder.

“It’s all over darling,” he murmured softly. “I think we can straighten things out now.”

He looked up as a calm, wise looking old man with long white hair approached slowly.

“I am a friend,” the old man said softly. “I am not afraid of the knife of Sali, the Goddess of Death. For I gave it to Professor Manners when he was here so many years ago. It was a pledge of our friendship and he always promised that he would bring it with him on his return.”

“Why are the people afraid of it?” Neal asked.

The old man shrugged.

“People are afraid of things they do not understand. Years, centuries ago, it was believed by my people that Death was a woman who chose her victims in the dark and killed them with just such a knife as you hold in your hand. That knife was venerated by our people and prayed to, that it might spare them its sting. It was believed invincible.

“As ruler, I discouraged such outmoded beliefs, and to further eliminate the belief I gave the sacred knife of Sali to Professor Manners. But I have been deposed as ruler, and under the influences of barbaric customs once again, you see how quickly my children revert to the beliefs and customs of their fathers.”

“A lucky thing for us they did,” Neal said. “What goes now? Will you take your job back as ruler around here?”

The white haired old man smiled.

“If my people want me,” he said simply, “I will be happy to retain my authority.”

Neal put his hand under Jane’s chin and lifted her head up.

“No more crying now,” he whispered. “Everything’s all set. The regular ruler is stepping back into the job and he’s a great old guy. Why — why I’ll bet he can even marry people!”

Adopted Son of the Stars

First published in Fantastic Adventures, March 1941.

Wilbur Wunch trudged wearily homeward through the wet, dismal night. His shoes squished at each tired step, and his narrow shoulders hunched against the penetrating dampness.

It was gloomy, depressing weather, and its lowering gloom settled like a somber pall over Wilbur’s slightly frayed soul.

He looked up at the rolling, leaden sky and thought of his cheerless spouse, Wilhelmina. He thought of her first because there was something in the ominous banks of dull, gray clouds that reminded him of Wilhelmina’s grim, frowning visage and secondly because the heavens always reminded him of Wilhelmina’s favorite hobby — astrology.

Astrology! How he hated even the word.

It was his wife’s second favorite topic. Her first was a sort of continuous rambling recrimination against Wilbur for not making more money. When she was not berating him for his lack of money-making ability she was casting horoscopes, visiting astrologists and mooning over the stars and their orbits.

Wilbur sighed. For an envious moment he thought wistfully of the delights of a bachelor existence.

His musings centered on one Joe Blodget, an unmarried young devil with a low-slung car, a bachelor apartment, and hosts of friends.

Joe Blodget had a much better job than himself. He had a much better existence. He had much more fun. He enjoyed life to the full and did whatever he wanted to do.

It wasn’t fair, he thought darkly, that one human being should be so happy and another human being be so miserable. He could be like Joe Blodget, if—

He derailed that particular train of thought with a jerk and hurried on homeward. Wilhelmina would be waiting for him to peel the potatoes for supper, and if he wasn’t there on the dot there’d be an eruption to make Vesuvius pale into insignificance. With a frantic glance at his watch, he broke into a trot...

He stumbled up the steps of his modest bungalow with twenty seconds to spare. He let himself in quietly, but before he could take off his damp brown overcoat or kick off his muddy rubbers, his wife’s shrill voice cut through the stillness of the house like a knife.

“Wilbur! Is that you?”

She asked or rather bawled the same question every night. Once Wilbur had answered: “No, it’s Santa Claus!” but he had never tried it again.

He answered now: “Yes, my dear,” as he shrugged out of his coat and scuffed off his rubbers with a resigned, hangdog listlessness.

“Wilbur,” his wife’s voice conveyed a note of suspicious cordiality, “come into the front room at once. There’s someone here I’m just dying to have you meet.”

Wilbur struggled against a sputtering, growing feeling of outrage. It was supper time, but that didn’t bother Wilhelmina, oh no. Her friends could lounge around the house from morning till night, and that was just fine. He didn’t count. His friends were treated as if they had the mange.

“Coming, my dear,” he said in a resigned voice.

He forced a weak smile over his features, then marched through the hall into the front room and into the presence of his wife and another sour-looking female lounging complacently in his armchair.

His wife stood up, and he wondered for the four-hundred-fifty-fifth time what he had ever seen in her. She was a tall, thin creature with a strong hatchet face that seemed to be waiting to chop at something. She wore her black hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her leathery neck, and her gray lips were usually pressed tightly together. Now they were parted slightly in a poor facsimile of a welcoming smile.

“Wilbur,” she said sharply, “I want you to meet Miss Elvira Chittling. Miss Chittling, my husband.”

Wilbur nodded and tried to look as if it were a great privilege. Miss Chittling was a huge, lumpy woman with a dull, bovine expression and coarse yellow hair that drooped discouragingly about her sloping shoulders.

She was looking at him appraisingly, he noticed.

“What house?” she asked suddenly.

“H-house,” floundered Wilbur, “what do you mean?”

“I mean, what house were you influenced by,” she repeated in a slightly exasperated voice. “What stellar combinations guide your destiny? Sagittarius, Capricorn, Scorpio—”

“I’m sorry, Elvira.” His wife was acidly apologetic. “My husband knows nothing of astrology. He refused to take lessons with me, refused to avail himself of the guidance of the stars — and look at him! Barely able to keep soul and body together. And as for me,” she stared heavenward like a martyr, “only they know what I’ve been through.”

Wilbur sighed despairingly.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“The stars,” his wife said, in the voice of one who has learned not to look for intelligence in her listeners. “The stars that guide our destiny know the suffering I’ve seen.”

She bowed her head, and Miss Chittling bowed her head, and Wilbur thought forlornly of his delayed supper.

“Will you excuse me,” he said timidly, “you two girls probably have some er — er — stars stuff to talk over, so I’ll just step—”

“Mr. Wunch,” the lumpy Miss Chittling’s voice disorganized his retreat, “have you ever been cast?”

“You mean thrown?” Wilbur offered blankly.

“I mean,” Miss Chittling gathered volume and dignity, “have you ever had your horoscope cast?”

“Well, no,” Wilbur admitted.

Miss Chittling surveyed him through narrowed lids and then beckoned imperatively.

“Come here,” she said softly. “Your time has come. The time for the stars to make known to you their will and desires has arrived. Sit beside me.”

“But,” Wilbur protested feelingly, “I don’t care what the stars have in store for me. I want my supper.”

“Wilbur!”

Wilbur flinched at the lash of his wife’s tone. When her voice developed that particular edge, it was no time to quibble.

“All, right,” he said wearily. With a last wistful look in the direction of the kitchen, he seated himself before the hefty figure of Miss Chittling.

She opened a leather portfolio and pulled out a number of sheets of heavy paper with intricate designs and circles drawn upon them. Wilbur noticed a clock-wise arrangement on the largest sheet of paper. It was crisscrossed by a half-dozen lines, and in each division of the circle there was the picture of some animal. Bulls, goats, and other animals that Wilbur couldn’t get a good look at.

“Astrology,” he mumbled.

He noticed that his wife and Miss Chittling looked up rather sharply at him, so he laughed weakly. “Heh, heh. Astrology, great stuff. Fine hobby.”

“Astrology,” Miss Chittling informed him sternly, “is no hobby.[11] Mr. Wunch, I want you to answer some questions for me. First the date of your birth.”

Wilbur told her. He also confided rather reluctantly a number of other things which Miss Chittling digested in somber silence.

“Hmmm.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “Very interesting, very interesting.” Her fingers ran up and down the various charts like plump rabbits chasing one another, finally stopped in one of the divisions of the largest circle. The one with animals, Wilbur noticed.

Miss Chittling then proceeded to take down some figures on a piece of scratch paper, then closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair.

Wilbur watched her furtively. Her lips were moving, and he could hear her breath whistling through her uneven teeth. She seemed to be mumbling some strange words that made no sense at all to Wilbur. It might be, Wilbur thought, that there was something to this astrology business after all. Maybe—

“Incredible!” Miss Chittling’s shout blasted through his furtive thoughts.

“It’s incredible, simply incredible,” Miss Chittling repeated again with less volume but considerably more feeling. “In all my years of astrological research I have never encountered a more remarkable phenomenon.”

“Elvira,” Wilhelmina Wunch snapped out the word, “what is it? What is so remarkable about Wilbur’s horoscope?”

Wilbur squirmed uneasily. Maybe he had been tried and found wanting by some unfriendly star.

“It is one of those things,” Miss Chittling informed the world in general and Wilhelmina Wunch in particular, “that occurs but once in millions of years.” She turned to Wilbur. “You are very fortunate, Mr. Wunch, that you have the benefit of this information.”

“Am I?” Wilbur asked without enthusiasm.

“Mr. Wunch,” Miss Chittling said, “amazing things are in store for you. A galaxy of stellar bodies have centered their influence on you, and you will be most susceptible to their effect tomorrow as the sun sets.”

Wilbur tried to appear properly impressed.

“Gosh,” he said. This sounded rather inadequate so he added, “Gee.”

“It is not a light matter,” Miss Chittling informed him sternly. “You must plan now to take advantage of the friendly influence of these myriad stars that have, for some reason, interested themselves in your welfare.”

“That right nice of them,” Wilbur said politely, “but—”

“Oh, Elvira!” his wife cried, “are things really that favorable?”

“I have said,” Miss Chittling replied majestically, “that I have never seen anything like it.”

“Well,” Wilbur said cautiously, “this has been a lot of fun, but I’m kind of hungry now, so I think—”

“You stupid, miserable fool,” his wife blazed at him. “Is that all you can think about? Don’t you realize your own good fortune?”

That was easy.

“No,” said Wilbur, “I don’t.”

Miss Chittling harrumphed herself into the conversation.

“I will try and explain it to you, Mr. Wunch. When one star’s friendly influence is directed toward a person, that person is considered to be extremely fortunate or lucky. That is no doubt the origin of the expression born under a lucky star. But,” Miss Chittling paused to sniff, “there is no such thing as luck, merely stellar intervention in human affairs. But in your case, Mr. Wunch, not one, but millions of stars are interceding on your behalf.”

“What for?” Wilbur asked.

“That, I cannot answer,” Miss Chittling replied with rare modesty, “but I do know, Wilbur Wunch, that tomorrow will be a miraculously fortunate day in your life.”

“That’s fine—”

“If,” Miss Chittling rumbled imperturbably on, “you know how to take advantage of your good fortune.”

“You will help him, won’t you?” Wilhelmina said. “You will be good enough to help him, won’t you, Elvira?”

Wilbur scratched his head.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “If I’m going to be so lucky tomorrow, what do I need any help for?”

Miss Chittling smiled. “Silly boy,” she murmured, “you will be lucky tomorrow, yes. But you need someone to coordinate and concentrate the diffused star-force so that the total effect of its intercession will be felt. I can do this. I can, by special observation and interpretation, combine the loose threads of stellar influence so that your good fortune will be received in one lump, so to speak.”

“How?” asked Wilbur.

“By meteor study,” Miss Chittling declared. “I study the relation of meteorites to star-force to human destiny.”

Wilbur swallowed. “I — guess that’s logical enough,” he offered timorously.

Miss Chittling delved into the portfolio again and came up with a leather bag. The contents she emptied into her lap.

Wilbur saw that they were stones and small rock fragments of various sizes, shapes, and hues. Miss Chittling pawed through them and finally picked out three pieces of slate-gray rock about the size of ice cubes.

“What are those?” Wilbur asked uncertainly.

“Meteor fragments,” Miss Chittling explained. She seemed too busy now to talk further. She had drawn forth from the portfolio a queer contraption of steel and wires that looked somewhat like a combination of a slide-rule and grocery scale. Into a compartment she dropped a meteor fragment, and then she moved an indicator along a calibrated bar until it seemed to catch in a tiny notch. Then she removed the meteor fragment from the compartment and inserted the remaining two.

“I think this is it,” she said, spacing her words very carefully. “I think this is it.”

“Oh, Elvira,” Wilhelmina Wunch said breathlessly, “I hope you’ve found it.” In her excitement Wilhelmina’s face flushed red and white like a barber pole. Her predatory nose was hooked forward like a sharp claw and her thin chest rose and fell like a bellows.

Miss Chittling suddenly slumped against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. “It is over,” she murmured throatily. “I have succeeded. These meteor fragments possess the correct equation to balance the star-forces with human destinies. Each of these fragments,” she raised the stones dramatically above her head, “are tuned to the galaxy of stars that are about to determine your fate. As the sun sets tomorrow, your stars will be in the ascendency. Make known your desires then, and they will be granted. Each stone represents an accumulation of good fortune, and for each stone a wish can be granted.”

“You mean,” Wilbur said unbelievingly, “because of the stones and the stars and everything, my wishes will be granted tomorrow?”

Miss Chittling nodded. She seemed to be spent from her exertions.

“Oh, that’s simply wonderful!” Wilhelmina cried in her crow-like voice. “Think of it! Riches, money, jewels — everything I’ve always wanted.”

The enthusiasm was contagious. “Gee,” Wilbur said happily, “I can get that fishing rod I’ve always wanted.”

“Fishing rod!” Wilhelmina’s voice was close to the cracking point. “That’s all you can think of. I will decide what we’re going to get from your wishes, and don’t you forget it.”

Wilbur felt a shivery premonition crawl up his spine. Wilhelmina, nagging and fretful, was bad enough, but Wilhelmina, grasping and greedy, would be impossible. But the faint fires of revolt had long ago been stamped out in Wilbur’s soul.

“Yes, my dear,” he replied meekly.

Miss Chittling’s plump hand fluttered before his nose. “Six dollars please,” she said, in a voice just above a whisper.

“Pay her,” hissed Wilhelmina.

Wilbur’s hand automatically dug into his pocket, but his soul writhed with injustice. He had six dollars — just six dollars — saved aside for the entrance fee in his bowling league. No money, no bowling!

He laid the money in Miss Chittling’s pink palm and watched her fingers close over it like the leaves of some flesh-eating plant.

“Thank you for the donation,” she murmured. “Now I must go. I must rest, rest.”

She handed the three stones to Wilbur and climbed heavily to her feet.

“Use your good fortune wisely,” she said as she started for the door.

Wilbur watched her leave, feeling like the man who bought the Brooklyn bridge at a “sacrifice price.” So absorbed was he that he didn’t feel the tug on his sleeve until it was repeated with sufficient force to jerk him halfway around.

His wife faced him. Her cold, hard features were stamped in a mask of greed and triumph. “Stop wool-gathering, you fool,” she snapped, “and give me those meteor fragments.”

“I should really have gone to work today,” Wilbur Wunch said plaintively the next afternoon. “I’ve never missed a day before. They’ll—”

“Oh, shut up, you miserable little worm!” Wilhelmina paced nervously up and down the length of the living room casting impatient glances at the bright afternoon sun. “Can’t you think of anything but that precious office? Can’t you think about me? You’ve never given me the things I deserved. Money, jewels, position! Other women have them, but not Wilbur Wunch’s wife. I’ve slaved and suffered and scrimped through the years, and now that you have the chance to do something for me, you worry about the office!”

She paused and glanced down at the three stone fragments in her hand. “These will give me the things I’ve always craved. You couldn’t do it, and now that you’ve got the opportunity, you’d think that you’d be happy to make amends.”

Wilbur Wunch sighed. Wilhelmina had been particularly unbearable since the astrologist had predicted that his three wishes would come true. All she had talked about had been the money, the jewels, the servants that she expected. She had made him stay home from work that day to be on hand at sunset, the appointed hour. Wilbur had the very definite suspicion that life would be far from pleasant if Wilhelmina’s desires were granted.

The sun, he noticed, was dropping into the horizon, a flaming red ball on the edge of the world. Wilhelmina turned to him, her thin narrow features set rigidly.

“It’s time,” she said. “I’ll tell you what to wish.”

Wilbur squirmed uncomfortably. He didn’t like the setup. He felt foolish. If Wilhelmina was so interested and so greedy, why shouldn’t she be the one to wish?

“All right,” he said petulantly, “but I don’t see why I had to get lucky all at once. It’s upset my whole day. I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Don’t worry,” Wilhelmina snapped, “you aren’t going to have much to do with this affair. I’m going to arrange that.”

“Why — why, what do you mean?” faltered Wilbur.

“Just this.” Wilhelmina faced him, her hands on her angular hips. “It’s time for you to wish now. The sun is going down. And you’re going to wish just what I tell you. Your first wish will be to wish that I had the wishing power for the remaining two stones. Do you understand me?”

“Why sure,” Wilbur said, “you want the power to make the wishes. That’s all right with me because I never wanted it anyway. That astrologer said I was going to be real happy and lucky today, but I never felt worse in my life. So you’re welcome to it. I wish that you had the power to make the two remaining wishes. There! Does that make you feel any better?”

“I’ll know in a little while,” Wilhelmina cried. She squared her narrow shoulders and threw back her head. “I wish I had one million dollars!” she said loudly.

Wilbur sighed. If Wilhelmina got her wish, it would be a calamity. She would turn into an unbearable, arrogant, over-proud snob. He shuddered contemplating it. What his own life would be like, he hardly dared think about.

In the middle of these unpleasant thoughts, the doorbell rang.

Wilhelmina answered it, and an instant later he heard a shrill, hysterical shriek sounding through the house. He started for the front of the house, but he met Wilhelmina rushing wildly toward him. Her thin face was flushed with fanatical exultance.

“It worked!” she screamed, “it worked!”

“What did?” he asked. He noticed a letter clutched in her hands.

“The stars!” she cried, “the stars have done it. My wish has been granted. A distant relative of mine died and left me his fortune. It amounts to just exactly one million dollars. I’m rich, rich, d’y’hear? RICH!”

She danced around the room, hugging the letter to her bosom, crying and screaming frantically.

Wilbur watched her in silence. It was worse than he had thought it would be. And that was saying a lot. He waited as she calmed down and he saw the greedy cunning creep into her face.

“I suppose,” she said quickly, “that you think you have some claim on this money. I can see it in your face. You think because you gave me the wishes you deserve half of it. Well you don’t, do you hear me? You don’t. It’s mine and I intend to keep every cent of it for myself.”

Wilbur knew his wife too well to be surprised. He only wondered gloomily about the black, unenviable future that stretched before him. He thought of Joe Blodget and sighed wistfully.

“And don’t forget,” Wilhelmina thrust herself into his pleasant dreams, “I still have another wish.” She glared at him scornfully and Wilbur would have sworn that her eyes actually glittered like they’re reported to do in fiction.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she said deliberately, “but before I make my wish, there are a few things I want to tell you. First, I want to tell you how much I despise you. How much your beaten, insignificant, frightened little mind disgusts me. Then I want to tell you that I’ve laughed at you for years and I’ve enjoyed brow-beating you because I knew you never had the courage to talk back. You’re a despicable, revolting little worm, Wilbur Wunch, and I had to tell you that before I leave you for good.”

“Leave me?” Wilbur gasped.

“Do you think I’m fool enough to stay now that I have money?” Wilhelmina demanded. “I’ve got the money I need, and here’s my last wish.” She stood before him a picture of incarnate rage and triumph — thin, bitter, mean, cruel and scornful.

“I wish,” she said spitefully, “that I’d never met you, Wilbur Wunch.” Wilbur opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a blinding flash shot through the room and then all hell seemed to explode in his face.

Before everything went black, he had a kaleidoscopic image of the room whirling dizzily, Wilhelmina’s lean features a mask of fright and amazement, and then the entire flashing picture merged into reeling fathomless blackness...

Wilbur Wunch had braced himself against the incredible, blinding shock that had assailed him. Braced himself, while bunching his hands into tight knots. But then, miraculously, the roaring had faded, the room seemed to be regaining balance. And Wilbur opened his eyes.

Everything was quiet, everything was beautiful, but — the realization struck him with the suddenness and force of blackjack in a dark alley — everything was totally changed!

He was no longer in the modest living room of his home! He was in a strange, luxurious apartment.

Dazedly, semi-hysterically, he looked wildly about. A thousand fears battled for admission to his mind. There was no Wilhelmina in this apartment, and even the clothes he was wearing were not the drab garments that usually concealed his slight frame.

Then, looking down, Wilbur realized for the first time that he clutched a cocktail glass in his hand and that he stood — clad in a red velvet dressing gown — before a duplex, super-tone radio.

Understanding broke on Wilbur like the sun beaming suddenly through gray clouds. He smiled and squared his shoulders and tasted the drink in the glass he held in his hand.

It was delightful. He took another sip, and his smile widened until he was chuckling, then laughing out loud. It was a good, ringing laugh, and it echoed cheerily through the sumptuous apartment.

Wilbur laughed until his sides ached, until he collapsed on the soft sofa, doubled up with the gleeful mirth that coursed through him. He didn’t stop until the tears streamed down his cheeks and he sat up too weak to laugh any more.

It was glorious. And the most glorious part of it was the fact that Wilhelmina had caused this wonderful change.

For her last spiteful wish had been that she had never met him. And what was more important, she had gotten her wish!

For here he was — Wilbur Wunch, Bachelor. Wilbur Wunch, who had never met Wilhelmina Wunch. A free, different Wilbur Wunch, who enjoyed the same delights and advantages that Joe Blodget enjoyed.

But that was not why he laughed until he was weak. It was Wilhelmina and her loss of the million dollars that made him laugh. For if she had never met him, she could never have wished for and never received the money. Oh, it was glorious!

He sank back into the sofa and picked up his glass. Through the high windows of his glorious new apartment he could see a myriad stars winking down at him, friendly and cheerful.

He winked back.

“You said I was going to be lucky,” he chortled, “and buddies, you sure gave me the jackpot.”

Then he started laughing all over again.

That astrology stuff was okay!

Notes

1

Science has made things invisible, by means of reflected light rays, bending them around an object until no light is reflected back to a certain point, where the observer is stationed. Thus, an object may be made invisible. However, in this instance, it is obvious that the reflective properties of the surface of the lamp were such that all light was bent around the lamp and not reflected back at all. Thus, with no light turned more than momentarily from its course, no object could have been visible.

When Albert Addin dropped the lamp, this perfect, non-reflecting, light-bending surface was dented enough to totally destroy the delicate balance of curving surface and reflecting angle. Thus, the lamp snapped into visibility. In photographing with an infra-red light filter, it seems that Albert unwittingly captured the only rays which were not by-passed around the lamp, which in normal color range, are invisible to the eye.

2

The Leanhaun Shee is a legendary Irish enchantress, who lives on love. Her very life and existence depend on love, and being loved. It is said that any man who loves her becomes her slave, and finally pays with his life for loving her — because she uses the life force that makes him live to sustain her own body! Thus, she steals, vampirelike, the life from her lovers and goes on living eternally. However, she too has a restriction, one that has never (say the legends) caused her any trouble: namely a curse placed on her by her own father that any man who could resist her charms would turn the tables on her, and she would become his slave.

3

Schizophrenia — A mental disease resulting from a split personality. The victim has two natures, generally diametrically opposed to each other.

4

Anyone who has read Freud will understand the manner by which Colegrave built up the terrific, though artificial frustration in his mind. Since he was a schizophrenic, with two separate personalities, he created a tremendous repression in his subconscious by willing one out of existence.

A physical example of what Colegrave did would be in the case of a man who, with an extreme effort of will, denied himself even the thought of food or drink. In that case, if this were carried to its conclusion, the man would certainly die. Colegrave “killed” his secondary nature by denying its existence absolutely.

This “death” was in the form of a mighty repression which built up pressure day by day, just as a hot water boiler might. Then when the ultimate repression was reached something had to give. In Colegrave’s case, by the aid of strange drugs, a physical manifestation of his subconscious was created. The drugs might possibly be those of Indian origin which are responsible for schizoid transformation in small animals. It was from a base of this type that the fictional transformation of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde was supposed to have been effected.

5

What Colegrave, for all his cleverness, didn’t realize, was that his own subconscious mind would be shattered in the electric chair. When he accomplished the physical cleavage between his dual personality, his own subconscious intellect activated the body of his secondary nature. Thus when the electric current shot through the body of the mayor and the district attorney’s assassin, it was the mind of Colegrave that was destroyed by the bolt.

6

The presence of Nazi paratroop panzer units, even in South American jungle territory, might be closer to actuality than mere possibility. Certain it is that the Axis powers interested in South American control would stop at nothing to gain that objective. And equally certain, in the terms of practical military feasability, is the fact that plane carriers, operating along the vast coastal sectors of South America, could approach close enough to jungle shores to send troops with equipment over the jungle, dropping them at locations prearranged with fifth columnists.

Scarcely a day passes in Washington military and state department circles, that there are not clouded rumors of actual filtrations in various similarly situated sectors in many of the neutral nations. One military expert recently hinted that Jap divisions were thus landed in some of the Luzon sectors as early as five days before December 7th.

Stories have also come out of the deeper Mexican regions, hinting that entire paratroop units have been discovered lurking in desolate jungle and mountain areas, waiting for striking orders. These rumors, fortunately, have added that alert Mexican scout patrols have swiftly “mopped up” such units, adding to the fantastic status of the modern hidden lightning warfare developed by the European Mad Dog.

Buried deep in the fragmentary records of ancient Inca legends, is the often referred to story of the once splendid city of Sacha. Ruled by Queen Remura, who professed to be the daughter of an incredibly huge snake — after which the city was named — the ancient Inca metropolis was devastated by Spanish Conquistadors in a sudden and savage raid. Most of the citizenry were supposed to have been slain; all of the city was left in smoking ruin. The snake god Sacha, and his daughter, Queen Remura, however, were supposed to have escaped into the jungle. And it was while the Spaniards were still terrifying the smaller villages outside the city that Queen Remura returned, astride the great snake Sacha, rallying the remaining Incans, and slaying the despoilers to the last man.

C.H. Barrington, in his two volume treatise, “Ancient Inca, Its Legends and Civilisations,” said of this particular story around the snake god legend, “True it is that the Spaniards ravaged these particular coastal regions. And also true, is the fact that the crumbling wreck of a Spanish galleon was found shattered on the shores of this region some seventy-five years after the incident is supposed to have transpired. There were no bleached bones of the Spanish crew, as is generally the case, in the waters near the beached and rotting hulk to indicate that Conquistadors had been aboard when it was washed ashore. It’s crew, whatever happened to it, undoubtedly perished somewhere in the jungle during a raiding foray. It is not beyond reason to suppose that the crew fell victims of the surviving members of the devastated city of Sacha.”

And about the legend itself, Barrington adds, “There is evidence that some primeval monsters, tremendous snakes of the size attributed to Sacha, were in existence in the Peruvian jungles at the time this ancient Inca city was in its glory. And even as late as 1931, rumors have come from the little explored sectors of the jungle to the effect that a giant snake prowled the ruins of the little known city, always accompanied by a strangely beautiful girl.”

As to the native attitude toward the legend, Barrington concludes, “Among the more superstitious, it is still the belief that Sacha guards the fate of Peru with his daughter, always ready to thwart another despoiling of the proud nation.”

7

Legend of Sacha, the snake god, and his daughter.

8

Irish folklore is full of beliefs about the “little people,” both good and bad. Perhaps the most famous of them all are the leprechauns, who are said to be invisible, except to true Irishmen, and only to them on certain occasions. They are, insist the Irish, the “voice” we call conscience.

9

See “Tink Takes a Hand,” October ’41 Fantastic Adventures.

In this story, Tink and Nastee make a wager, selecting a bystander, and proceed to discover which of them is most capable — Tink in making the victim happy; Nastee in making him miserable. Tink finally won the bet by locking Nastee in a wall safe, where Nastee had gone to steal a jewel in a rather underhanded trick.

10

Of the many legends that abound in Irish mythology, one of the most charming is the folktale of the little people who are believed to be spirit or soul of music. These creatures, usually feminine in gender, are reputedly embodied in all great works of music, and it is their presence that lends magnificence to the compositions.

11

Astrology is not regarded generally as a true science, but as a pseudo science. Many people believe the stars do have an influence on events, and science itself does not deny that this may be the case. Certainly powerful radiations are emanated by all super-heated bodies, such as the stars are, and conceivably, they may effect our bodies and minds, and in that manner, events. However, cold bodies, like the planets, on which astrology is largely based, cannot affect us that way, and the powers attributed to them are largely mythical, and not to be confused with the science of astronomy.

Content

William P. McGivern
25 Classic Fantasy Stories from the Pulps

A note from the publisher

Al Addin and the Infra-Red Lamp

Chapter I

Chapter II Albert Has a Visitor

Chapter III George Goes to Work

Rewbarb’s Remarkable Radio

Howie Lemp Meets an Enchantress

Double in Death

Bertie and the Black Arts

Daughter of the Snake God

Chapter I

Chapter II Rendezvous with a Killer

Chapter III An “Accident”

Chapter IV A Rebuke for Carlos

Chapter V The Corpse in Curtis’ Cabin

Chapter VI An “Escape”

Chapter VII A Jungle Trap

Chapter VIII Maria Again

Chapter IX A Panzer Attack!

Chapter X Sacha

The Battle of Manetong

Duncan’s Dreadful Doll

When Destiny Dealt

Goddess of the Fifth Plane

Chapter I

Chapter II A Strange World

Chapter III Bondiral

Chapter IV

Chapter V Laonara!

Chapter VI

Plot of Gold

The Picture of Death

The Tireless Leg

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

The Ghost that Haunted Hitler

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Tink Takes a Hand

Tink Takes a Fling

Tink Takes Command

Tink Fights the Gremlins

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Death Makes a Mistake

The Willful Puppets

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Enchanted Bookshelf

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Genie of Bagdad

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

World Beyond Belief

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

People of the Pyramids

Adopted Son of the Stars

Notes